After Google 2010 updates, it was very clear that page speed is going to be a major ranking factor for Google. We all know that Google always prefers User Experience, and always changes its algorithm to suit the user searches or queries.
Among other changes, Google also introduces “Search By Images”, which once again underlines the importance of Images in Google Searches. What’s more, you can also find images hold the major place in Google Images and an attractive and relevant image can bring traffic to a website.
Now if we follow the above trend, it’s important to see the importance of faster loading website. As per Gomez and akamai.com, half of the users love sites which load in less than 2 seconds. If the page takes more than 3 seconds to load almost 40% of visitors tend to leave that site, thus increasing the bounce rate.
From the SEO perspective also, it is more important than ever, that a website load faster for a good search engine ranking.
The main culprit in slow website speed is Images. Images are one of the most important parts among the aesthetics of a website.
An Image is better than a thousand words, so true, and that’s why Images hold so important place on any website.
The image also helps to break the sea of words and make the content more readable and presentable. But what if these images slow down your website and drive away your readers and traffic?
That’s when the Image Optimization comes into the picture.
What is Image Optimization?
Image optimization is about reducing the file size of your images as much as possible without sacrificing quality so that your page load times remain low.
Image optimization is important for the success of any business because slow loading images are the sole culprit of poor user experience.
source: Hubspot
From the above infographic, it is very clear how site speed can affect overall conversions of your websites. Apart from this Google punish a slow loading website with poor rankings and exposure.
Benefits of Image Optimization
Improves Page Load Speed:
Page load speed is a time taken by a webpage to load completely. It can depend on many factors from your website host to website design and layout.
Websites having less than 2 seconds loved by the users, so if you are optimizing 64% of your website’s weight i.e.images, definitely it going to improve your website’s speed.
This gives your user a faster experience and would love to interact with your products and services.
Some interesting case studies:
Aliexpress reduced load lime for their pages by 36% and recorded a 10.5% increase in orders and a 27% increase in conversions for new customers.
Case Study of Amazon
Amazon did a test which showed they would lose $1.6 B/year if the speed slowed down by just 1 second.
There are many tools which can help you to analyze your page load speed like:
Google’s Page Speed Insights
Pingdom
2. Improves SEO Ranking
Page speed is one of the ranking factors for Google, and Google does not like slow websites like it’s users. Google punishes slow websites with poor rankings and exposure.
Page Speed is directly related to SEO, and can rank your website with higher rankings. It is a well-known fact that higher rankings on search engines mean good traffic and maybe good conversions.
Some Interesting Case Studies:
Google’s research shows that chance of a bounce increased 32% when the page load time went from 1 second to 3 seconds,
bounce rate increased by 90% when it increases from 1 to 5 seconds.
if your site takes more than 10 seconds to load bounce rate may go up to 123%.
Users visit 8.9 pages when page load time is 2 seconds and 3.3 pages when page load time is 8 seconds.
Yahoo reduced their page load time by 0.4 sec which resulted in a traffic increase by 9%.
Microsoft’s 0.4 sec. delay can result in reduced query volume of 0.21%.
3. Boost Conversions
There is a lot of research available which clearly indicates the relationship between page speed and conversions. According to a study, 79% of customers who are not satisfied with the webpage speed, do not buy from the same site again.
Some Interesting Case Studies:
For every 1 second of improvement, Walmart experienced up to a 2% increase in conversions. For every 0.1 seconds of improvement, Walmart grew incremental revenue by up to 1%.
If Google increased its page load time by 0.5 sec, they would get 25% fewer searches.
Click here for more interesting stuff on how page speed affects your website
Click here for Google’s Guidelines on Image Optimization.
After this discussion, you must be thinking of the best way to optimize your website images. You will find many tools for optimizing your images.
I would highly recommend Kraken as the Best Image Optimizer, available today.
Why Kraken is the Best Image Optimizer?
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Kraken is the Industry Leader
Kraken.io is the industry leader in terms of Image optimization. One of the important characteristics of Kraken is that it reduces weight and not quality. It is important to note that to get the smallest possible size, you have not compromised on the quality of the results and does not lead to visual degradation.
2. Off-site Processing:
Most WordPress plugins process and optimize images “on server”, meaning that the server has to do the resource-intense job of crunching images, creating load and efficiency issues on servers as well as hits to website performance. Kraken processes images on their own servers which leads to more efficient optimization.
3.Optimal Page Loading Speeds:
For most of the times, the main reason for a slow website load is imagery. Using Google Page Speed Insights, you can find out the many reasons which slow down your site. Most probably, images are the main reason to slow down your site.
But with Kraken, all images will be directly Kracked, optimized. When you upload an image to WordPress, the theme will create a number of sizes of images, typically a thumbnail, small, medium, large, etc- and with Kraken installed on your site all of these images will be optimized.
4. Reduce Your Operating Cost:
Using Kraken.io you can cut bandwidth and storage expenses down to more than half. Your images will occupy about 50% space on average (often less) and your bandwidth savings could be an absolute knockout depending on how many page impressions you get.
5. Adopted by Other Major corporations:
Kraken is used by industry leaders like Microsoft, Nvidia, Microsoft, Dell, Tesla, Nasdaq among many others. Kraken has optimized more than 3 billion images and the number is growing daily.
Integrating Kraken.io into our dev process has been really easy and has helped us greatly reduce our bandwidth usage.
— Anton Molleda, Program Manager, Microsoft
6. Improved Search Engine Ranking:
Faster sites definitely rewarded by Google on SERP with higher rankings, and with Kraken, you can easily measure your results on Google Page Speed Insights reports before and after.
How to Install Kraken?
Watch this short video on how to install Kraken
Pricing for Kraken.io
Kraken allows every account to start as a Free Account, which comes with 100 MB of testing quota, Full API Access, Web Interface PRO, WordPress Plugin, Magento Extension, and Kraken Cloud Storage.
If you are a Wealthy Affiliate member, you need not buy this plugin, as WA is providing this awesome plugin to all its members for all the websites.
Recently Carson, the co-founder of Wealthy Affiliate, made the announcement of Kraken being used as a default plugin on all WA websites, with no extra cost to its members. So with these upcoming changes, I am sure that both of my websites will be super fast and also saving me almost $120 per year.
With Wealthy Affiliate, I rest assured that the latest technology will be avail to all the WA members with no extra cost and included in its Premium Membership.
A Super Cool Kracked Deal!
Well, pl let me know which tools you are using for image optimization and if you have any questions about image optimization or Kraken, pl let me know in the comments below, I will be more than happy to guide you in the right direction.