One of the leading issues I see for slow websites is huge images on the website.
By all means, have a stunning image, but if it’s 12MBs, someone somewhere needs to load that on your webpage and not everything has super duper fast internet (and your host can’t always deliver large files at a consistent speed).
Before Server Optimisation
One way we can do this is before your images even touch your web server, this is one of the best ways to optimise your images, let’s go through some of them now:
TinyPNG
This is one of the first websites I used to compress images and I actually still recommend clients use it to this day. It’s really simple to use, just drag images and drop them. You can optimise up to 20 images at one time at a 5MB per image maximum. Like I mentioned, it’s really simple. Once you’ve compressed them, you can download them and just upload them to your website. It’s good for 99% of people.
CompressImage.io
Those that are looking for a more robust tool can use CompressImage.io, this is something I regularly use and I love it. What I love about it is it’s all done locally. Now, if you’re not a nerd, let me explain. With something like TinyPNG, you upload your images to their server, their server spits it back out to you and that’s how you get your images. But with CompressImage, they load it all on your browser, so nothing leaves your PC and it compresses, converts and resizes all within your browser. It’s actually what I use for ItsJay.UK to convert my energy drink images after I’ve edited them!
On Server Optimisation
Okay, so those are a couple of local ways to do it (before they hit your server), let’s cover some that can help once you’ve already got loads of large images on your website.
ShortPixel
Arguably one of the best and most affordable image optimisation plugins, they offer everything from compression to a CDN to house those images. They have loads of other features too, but I would recommend taking a look at their website, there’s far too much to cover here. But it’s trusted by loads of people in the industry.
Flying Images
This free offering is a pretty cool solution, I used it back when I first started and they’re still going strong! Pretty much anything made by WP Speed Matters is a safe bet for your website!
One Thing About Formats
So, if you don’t know, there’s multiple formats for images. Some of the popular ones being JPG or JPEG and PNG. That being said, you should look into formats such as SVG (perfect for logo’s, it can never pixelized, with a tiny file size) and WebP, a format created to have small file sizes, but less yucky looking images. There are many more, but you’ll discover them as you dive deeper and I wouldn’t want to overwhelm you or tell you about a format that might not be supported everywhere.
Final Thoughts
You can 100% do something like this yourself and if anything, I encourage it! There’s nothing like seeing and understanding how your website works and functions! But if it’s something you’re not comfortable with or feel like you’d break, you should go ahead a send me a message 😉