What are the Best Ways To Optimize Images for Better Website Design?
One of the most important aspects for any business/company, whether small or big, is Good Website Design.
That’s right.
Any experienced webmaster will tell you that web design is one thing that will essentially push you above or pull you below your competition.
Why is that?
Because quality website design reflects on your brand, helps potential customers understand what your business is all about, and helps them decide whether they should buy your product/service or not.
Of course, it’s common knowledge that a good website design is key to attracting traffic and increasing conversions. This further proves the importance of having a quality web design.
Apart from making your website mobile-friendly and fast, one of the best ways to enhance your website design is optimizing images the right way.
When we talk about image optimization for good web design, it basically means making the images on your website visually appealing and properly sized for best performance.
In this article, we look at some of the best ways to optimize images for better web design.
Best Practices for Optimizing Images for Quality Website Design
#1. Use High-Quality Images
Perhaps the quickest way to upgrade the look and feel of your website with little effort is using high-quality images.
When you display quality and relevant images on your website, you’re not only making it look more aesthetically appealing and desirable, you’re also making it look more professional- and professional websites tend to appear more trustworthy and credible.
That’s not all.
With the right images, your website looks a little bit more expensive, and as you probably known, when something appears more aesthetically appealing and professional, most people assume it’s more expensive.
Additionally, when your website appears more appealing and professional, it increases your visitors engagement. Ultimately leading to more traffic and conversions.
This is something that you would definitely want, right?
The good news is that you don’t have to be a professional photographer to get high-quality images for your websites. You can easily source great images from stocks sites such as Pixabay, Unsplash, Flickr, and more.
#2. Make All Your Images the Same Size and Style
Uploading images of different sizes and style may not seem like a big problem, but it actually is.
When you upload images of different sizes and styles, it kind of creates a messy look on your website design.
When you consistently use images of the same style and size, your web pages will look much more appealing and organized. Doing so will also prove to be beneficial when lining your texts, columns, and other formations.
#3. Resize All Images to Optimize Page Speed and Appearance
Resizing your web images to enhance appearance and optimize page speed is another way to improve your website design.
As a website owner, you want to find the best quality images for your website. This is good. However, finding images that have the right balance of resolution and size is more important than anything else.
Why is that?
Because when you choose images with high-resolution, the resulting image size becomes large, and this can slow down your website speed, not to mention that large images can be annoying to your web visitors.
So what is the best way to find the perfect balance between image size and resolution?
Well, one, use small image file sizes. Most experts recommend at least 100kb and below for each image. The other way is adjusting the dimensions of the images, which is often measured in pixels.
The perfect image dimensions for most websites/blogs usually range from 795 by 300 pixels, or more.
#4. Choose the Correct File Format
JPEG and PNG are two of the most popular image file types on the web. However, each one of them has their advantages and disadvantages, and it’s therefore important that you know the best format to use for better website design.
PNG has better image quality compared to JPEG and has a wider array of supported colors. However, due to its large size and lack of lossy compression, PNG image files can slow down your website.
JPEG on the other hand is small-sized and is perfect for large photographic images.
Of course, your choice will be influenced by the intended purpose of your website. The decision is yours!
#5. Place the Image Near Relevant Text
One of the biggest mistakes that most website owners make is placing totally unrelated images to their text.
Whenever possible, place all images near relevant text. This will avoid confusing your visitors, and most importantly, it can help to better rank your page.
For example:
If your page is taking about weight loss, avoid placing an image of a bicycle or other unrelated things.
And if you can’t seem to find a good image match for your text, you can simply remove unwanted objects from photos you have. This will give you an image that your visitors will totally engage with.
Remember: Good website design is key to enhancing user engagement.
Wrapping It Up
Quality website design is a great way to give your web visitors the most enjoyable experience and value. Given the fact that most web visitors only take approximately 4 seconds to decide whether to continue browsing your site or not, first impression with a good web design is crucial- and proper image optimization can make it happen.
Hopefully, you will take the first bold step and properly optimize your images for better website design and the success of your site.
What are your thoughts on image optimization for quality website design? Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comments section and share this article widely!