Do you own a website? Or thinking of creating one? Well, you’ve probably come across the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words”; which is without a doubt true.
Web images and in particular high-quality images play a critical role in luring your website visitors to explore more, read more articles, and even effortlessly subscribe to premium items you might have on your site. In other words, images create rapport with your viewers boosting their confidence and trust in your content.
However:
There is always a problem that comes with adding too many images: slow loading speed. While you might want to make your site as appealing as possible through images, it is also important to ensure you retain a high loading speed. Else, your potential viewers won’t even get the chance to see your content.
According to Akamai.com, 30% of internet users especially e-commerce consumers expect a site to load in a second or less. If a page takes more than 3 seconds to load, 40% of the visitors tend to close the site, which increases the bounce rate. Nobody wants this and neither should you.
Does this mean that you limit the number of images on your site to retain the high loading speed?
Definitely not.
Continue reading and you will learn how you can add as many images to your site as you wish without affecting its loading speed.
What is Image Optimisation?
In simple terms, optimising an image is the process of reducing its storage size without affecting its resolution, size, or format. It can be done in different ways such as caching, compressing the storage size, or resizing it.
Importance of Optimising Images on Your Site
Of course, image optimisation reduces the overall size of your website which increases the loading speed. But apart from that, it improves your SEO ranking as a result of the increased speed, boosts your conversion by reducing visitors bounce rate, and best of all, enhances user engagement and experience.
The good news is, you don’t have to scratch your head wondering how to optimise your images. There are several web applications out there that can help you do all that without spending a dime or a ton of effort.
The best of them all is ShortPixel image optimiser.
ShortPixel Image Optimiser
ShortPixel is an incredible cloud-based image optimisation software specifically designed for WordPress sites. It can also be used for other sites but you need to do some coding on your end to make it work.
We have been using the ShortPixel Image optimising WordPress plugin on our site for a while and we can endorse it. Best of all, all the images have the same resolution with unnoticeable differences in quality with smaller file size.
Here is how the basic image optimisation workflow looks like:
- With the plugin installed and activated, you upload images on your WordPress site’s media library as you normally do.
- The ShortPixel plugin will send the uploaded images to its cloud servers, either automatically or through the bulk optimisation option
- The servers will do all the optimisation chopping based on the selected settings on your plugin’s settings panel
- The optimised images are sent back to your WordPress media gallery from the cloud by replacing the previous versions or adding to the gallery while retaining the previous versions. It all depends on the settings you choose.
Sounds pretty easy! Right?
Supported Image Formats
The plugin supports all the famous image formats such as JPG, PNG, and GIF (both images and animations). It also supports PDF documents. While the PDF format might sound less common and less useful to photograph enthusiasts, it comes in handy when you want to create a website that contains numerous PDF guides such as courses or e-books.
Pricing
The plugin itself is free on WordPress. However, accessing the plugin’s cloud service where all the serious work happens requires a premium subscription.
The plugin still offers a free cloud access option but for only 100 images a month which I don’t think can serve any serious website.
For you to unlock the optimisation of more than 100 images a month, you need to subscribe to either of the following options. First, you can sign up to a premium monthly subscription, perform a one-off purchase of a credit bundle, or subscribe to the dedicated pricing option for large-scale image optimisation.
An important thing to remember when deciding which option to go with is that the word-count for processed images include all the derivative images that WordPress creates for thumbnails among others. While you might choose to not include these images in the plugin, it is important to remember that not doing so means excluding the very images that are most likely to be displayed on the web by WordPress.
With that said, you can choose to subscribe to three types of monthly subscriptions; $4.99 for 5,000 images/month, $9.99 for 12,000 images/month, or $29.99 for 55,000 images/month.
The one-time purchase option has different options to choose from. Click this link to view more, including the dedicated pricing options.
Once you successfully purchase either of the options, you receive an API key which you are required to add to the plugin’s settings to unlock it. You will then be able to tweak the settings to your liking and start optimising your images.
Using on Multiple Sites
ShortPixel allows for use of a single API key on different sites. All you need to do is install it on the first site to activate it and then you can activate it on the other sites individually using the same key.
Comparison With Competitors
The one thing that makes ShortPixel the go-to plugin is its ability to support different image formats that other plugins don’t. It also supports the latest WebP image format. ShortPixel offers an unlimited file size compared to Kraken.io and Optimus which support a maximum of 16MB and 5MB respectively.
Conclusion
We have tested and enjoyed the plugin’s capabilities and I can assure you it doesn’t disappoint. We have used it on our website EasySocio for a while now and, it has always delivered fantastic results every single time.
The free version is just as good for small blogs or websites, however, if you ever need to upgrade to higher plans, I guarantee you; it is one of the best investments for your website.
Visit ShortPixel.