Really big images on your website is one of the easiest things to fix, and can make a big impact on your user experience.
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Really big images on your website are one of the easiest things that you can fix and one of the things that make the most impact on page load speed. If you use a platform like WordPress, they’re going to when you upload a picture, they automatically resize your image. And depending on what theme or builder you’re using, they might even add even more picture sizes.
So keep that in mind when selecting which image to use. A lot of builders will have you pick a size as well as a picture, so keep that in mind. Pick the right size. If you’re using the block editor, which is in WordPress, but it’s a more visual editor than previous versions, they’re going to automatically show the right size image for the screen size. So you don’t have to worry as much.
But you still want to make sure that when you initially upload that picture, it’s not super big. Now, I go into Photoshop, resize the image down first, and then optimize the image by uploading it into an image optimizer. I use tinypng.com. Then I download the picture and then I upload it to WordPress. So I go through a whole separate process.
You don’t necessarily have to go through that whole thing, but there are websites out there. There are places you can go to easily resize images. You’re going to want to resize it to pretty much the size that you need. You can go a little bigger depending on what the picture is. You might not need to go quite as big as two times what you need, but keep your images as big as you need them. Do not make them 3000 by 2500.
If it’s just a regular old picture that you’re putting in a blog post, that’s just too big and you’re never going to need the image to be that size. So then it also takes up server space, which then also slows your website down. There is stuff that you can do, like caching and CDNs, and there’s all kinds of stuff you can do, but just on the base level, it’s not necessary.
So make sure your images are the right size for what you need them for. Make sure that they’re optimized and uploaded properly.
On a side note, make sure you’re also adding alt tags to images. Describe what’s in the image. Don’t plug in a million different SEO keywords. Just describe what’s in the image. Make it great for users with disabilities and for search engines.
Keep your images small and optimized.