5 Questions about Image Optimization and Its Sales Effect

Image source: Pixabay

Most brand owners give all their attention to online advertising, content SEO, and backlinks, forgetting a vital aspect of digital marketing – image optimization.

You could draw traffic using the right content SEO tactics and ads, and have few or none of these people get past the landing page. And the simple reason is poor image optimization.

The only way to increase sales on your website is by offering your visitors a better experience. Create visual appeal without compromising on their experience.

Let’s dive deeper into image optimization, its importance, and how to apply it to your website. 

What is Image Optimization?

Image optimization is a technique of refining images to reduce their file size without affecting their quality. 

It is a technique for achieving image SEO, involving the optimization of the image’s name, size and positioning to make them more visible to search engines. Optimizing your images also lightens web pages and increases their loading speed. 

Slow loading pages can negatively affect your revenue. A second’s delay on the Amazon site could cost the company $1.6 billion in revenue. 

Why is Image Optimization Important?

Image optimization is essential for four main reasons.

1) Better Ranking

Search engines factor in a site’s load speed when ranking websites. The high load speed obtained from optimizing your images coupled with using the right keywords will have your site on the first page of search engines. And this will draw traffic to the website. 

2) Network Resource Savings

With the lightened pages, loading your website will require significantly less network resources. It makes your website more responsive to mobile devices. Statistics indicate that 52.2% of web traffic in 2018 was generated from mobile phones.    

3) Improved User Experience

Easy navigation in a site is one of the main factors that determine a website’s user-friendliness. Lighter pages will make it easier and faster to navigate between pages, making your website user-friendly. This further attracts traffic to your site. 

4) Improve Conversion

The increased traffic from high search engine ranking will increase your conversion rate. Similarly, when users have a satisfactory experience the first time they are on your site, there is a high chance that they will revisit the website for another purchase and refer to other customers. 

What are the Image Optimization Techniques?

You can use these six techniques to optimize your images.

1) Image Caching

This is a technique that involves storing image files within the user’s browser cache. This means that every time a user revisits the site, the images do not have to be downloaded again. It reduces the number of downloads on the site and increases its loading speed.

2) File Size Reduction

Here is some guidance: Try to keep e-commerce images at 70kb, normal web images to be 80-150 KB, and large images such as those on the home page to be 250-350 KB. You can decrease the size of your images without affecting the quality using apps such as Adobe Photoshop and Canva. Remove excess details in the metadata like the location where the image was taken.  

3) Using the Right File Format

There are various file formats with the most common being .jpeg or .jpg, .gif, and .png. You can easily compress image files in the .jpeg or .jpg format without losing their quality. But we cannot say the same about .gif image files and .png images. They lose quality when reduced in size. 

4) Alt Attributes

Alt attributes will improve your SEO services. They are text alternatives to a page’s images. They describe an image and provide web accessibility. Without overstuffing your alt attribute, include relevant keywords that identify the images best to rank your work higher on search engines. And use plain language. 

5) Proper Positioning

Your images will rank better if they are placed near relevant text. The content of your image should relate to this text in a straightforward way such that the reader can make the connection at a glance. 

6) Image Sitemaps

Image sitemaps help search engines discover your images more easily by listing their location. By using image sitemaps, you get to direct Google to the images in your site that you want it to crawl and index. It helps you rank higher on SERPs. 

How to Optimize an Image Without Losing Quality?

Here are a few tips for applying image optimization techniques without compromising on quality. 

1) Get Quality Images from Stock Websites

You don’t have to hire a photographer to get high-quality photos. There are free stock photos available in the web in various sizes. If you cannot find one in a small size, you can compress it using image file reduction tools. 

2) Maintain Uniformity 

Reducing the size of your site’s images does not mean you should be negligent about their appearance on your website. Maintain consistency in dimensions and style. If for instance, you are listing your products, some should not be oriented horizontally and others vertically. 

3) Test Your Images

The response from Google and your audience will help you determine if your efforts to optimize your images is reducing their quality. Web analytics tools will indicate the point at which you lose your customers, while your SERP ranking will help you determine if the changes attract a positive response from Google crawlers.      

How Does Image Optimization Improve Sales?

There are three main reasons to try image optimization today.

1) Quality Leads

Increased organic traffic as a result of better ranking on SERPs attracts qualified leads. Depending on the relevance of your products or service to their needs, they can make purchases, read your content, and share your website with other potential customers.

2) Better Customer Engagement

Great visuals and easy navigation keep the visitor on your page for longer. They can discover new products or services you are offering and recall them in case of a future need. It builds a loyal customer base where they keep coming back for more.

3) Better Credibility

A fast loading website that creates a positive experience for your users earns you credibility. It is an indication that your brand is efficient and that you are concerned about customer satisfaction. It builds their loyalty. 

Conclusion

There is so much to gain from optimizing your images. It will improve your site’s loading speed, rank you higher on search engine result pages, and give your visitors a positive experience. This, in turn, generates leads through increased organic traffic, increases sales, and creates a loyal customer base. 

You can achieve these benefits by resizing your images without interfering with their quality. Source high-quality images from stock websites in .jpg or .jpeg file formats and add image sitemaps and alt attributes to make them SEO-friendly. 

Use image caching to minimize downloads on your site and place images next to relevant text. Finally, test the effects of your image optimization efforts on your site’s ranking and on the behavior of your visitors. 

Author Bio:

David Freudenberg is the active public relations manager for ProductionCrate an awesome website providing custom, easy to use, tools and resources so you can take your production to the next level! When he is not building relationships with others for ProductionCrate. He enjoys spending time with his family and friends.