The website images are important to site traffic

Important things to know about website images

Website images are an important element about which to learn. Some I found out through experience gained. Others have developed as things have changed online. The pictures are important to your website too. They can make your page attractive and bring people to visit. These are what gives a visual that can be used to show your topic better.

Website images affect page load time

The first thing to look at to improve your page load speed for your site is the size of your pictures. If they are very large it slows this process down. This is a simple thing to improve too!

Optimize/Compress your website images

There are sources online to compress your image to a much smaller size. This is a sacrifice on the detail for the pictures, but when you look at the side by side pixel quality of them, this can work just fine. Google suggests keeping your image to under 500k.

Optimization

Optimization is the combination of file format and compression changes that reduce the size of your image while preserving needed quality.

Compression

It is a good idea to get a good balance of compression and picture quality. Too high a compression can ruin the picture quality. The lossy compression uses a filter on the picture that eliminates some data. Lossless compression preserves more quality in the process to compress.

Format

Trading image detail for load speed can be worked in a good balance. jpg format is the best to use for your images. png format can be used for things that are text and simple shapes like logos for instance. jpg uses lossy compression, so they are smaller files and load faster. If you look at the side by side comparison of the picture pixelation, you can see that reducing their size is a fine compromise.

Logo

If you create a logo, you may want to be careful of both the picture format and the tool you use to create it. There is a special kind of photo editing software called vector graphic editing software.

The people who create logos professionally use this vector graphic editing software and if you want, you can find opensource versions of this software that are free. It is designed to give nice borders on your text and image. I made the text part of my logo with vector editing software. It is a composite in the end that is png format.

Modifying of pictures

Here is an interesting thing about making changes to pictures, when you remove the background, your picture actually becomes MUCH bigger in png format. Transparent background must be saved in GIF, TIF, or PNG (the one I use). Even if you put a solid color background for it, it will remain very large. I know this from experience in doing this work. A cool composite picture also does this.  You can optimize these pictures though.

Sources

There are many free resources for pictures online. I find myself worrying about them going away. This is a wonderful resource that we should appreciate being able to use, and utilize while we can.

These freely shared pictures usually have Creative Commons license (CC). With this licensing, you can distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as you give credit for the original creation.

There are variations of the CC license that are more restrictive in specific ways. Be sure that you know for sure what the license is for the picture you use. I would say that you should also have a system of storing the creator’s name with them. I add it on to the picture name if it is not included.

SEO

Your captions and description for your images are important to your SEO and attracting visitors. You want to have your important keywords there to help on that. Each page or post should have at least one picture, the feature image. Remember that the alternate caption is very important too.