Images are necessary to most website design – but did you know that on average images make up almost 75% of a web page’s weight? This stat alone is why optimizing website images is a must for any business operating online.
As images make up such a large part of a website, it means that they also play a large role in a website’s loading speed. Fast loading is a key part of any user’s onsite experience, as a quarter of visitors would leave a website that takes more than 4 seconds to load. Images that are compressed and correctly formatted don’t hinder loading, ensuring a smoother visit and a lower bounce (users leaving site) rate.
Besides load speed, images play a massive part in converting visitors, especially for ecommerce websites. 78% of Americans said “product images” were what they looked for in an online store making them the most-named feature, followed by product reviews and side-by-side product comparisons. To add to this, over half of online shoppers want to see a minimum of 3 product photos before making a purchase. As images are so important to online consumers, optimizing them should clearly be a foundational part of any ecommerce website.
The role images play towards SEO has also grown in recent years. Optimizing images for SEO – through correct formatting, naming, and alt. tagging – helps a search engine to contextualise images within the rest of the page content. Having a more detailed understanding of a page’s content helps a page to rank better on search engine results.
For further statistics and information on Image Optimization, please see the infographic from Website Builder Expert below:
