In today’s time users have plenty of options for online stores, but have very less amount of time to choose which website to opt for, It does not matter much to them about what better you served them yesterday, but what matters the most is the constant engagement of buyers online.

In the case of Ecommerce site, you cannot ignore to add visual contents to attract customers, images play an important role in the engagement of customers and huge sale. Visual contents are essential for any web design, it might seem tough for the newbies but it can be done beautifully by the intlum a website design company in Kolkata.

Why optimizing images is crucial for online stores?

As we all know loading speed is the biggest challenge for any online business, to make all images easily accessible without slowing the page, optimizing is a need to be done. by a Website design company in Kolkata like Intlum technologies offers better optimization of images according to the following aspects:

Slow loading speed of the website is everything that drives the customers away from your site, unoptimized images are the biggest cause of low page speed, loading of the page plays an important role in building up the image of the website for online customers. The slowdown can cause you loss of millions if your site doesn’t meet UX standard aptly and page loading.
Use of right optimizing technique is an essential thing for an e-commerce site that always need sales and constant traffic.
Slow loading of the page due to unoptimized images is one of the main reason for the slowdown of the website.
E-commerce websites have multiple product sales, images implications for the search engine presence, So as to walk ahead in the race of traffic, sales and rankings and become a top-selling e-commerce
E-commerce stores need to make the best use of images and attract users as well as search engines equally.

Optimized Images

Optimizing is basically the process by which image quality is enhanced and it is made fit for web users as well as search engines. Optimized images have a huge contribution towards the website improvement as well as its performance. Such images make less use of server bandwidth and ultimately makes the content load faster.

If you wish to attract traffic, use such images which are:

Optimized as per Google standard.
The quality of image, file type and image size should be appropriate for search bots and users.
Your blog should have optimum sized images also search engines should be able to crawl them.

Thus, implementing optimization techniques to the image can provide benefit to both users as well as the website.

Drawbacks of Unoptimized images.

If you want your image to appear in a search result for certain keywords, your image must be optimized according to the algorithm of the search
Unoptimized images cause’ slow loading speed due to a number of HTTP requests, the absence of HTTP compression, and image without caching information.
Inappropriately placed images, wrong sized images, and slow loading images mostly fail to grab the attention of the users and users switch to other sites.
Slow loading website and low-quality images can never attain the attention of the users, this happens due to unoptimized images which lower’s conversion rate.

Image Optimization Techniques

Attaining right balance between picture quality and file size is the basic principle of image optimization.
Make images more SEO friendly so that Google can easily crawl and rank them in search engine results.

1 .Add ALT tags:

Alt Tags are used to describe an image in the right manner so that Google can easily crawl it. Adding alt tags increases SEO value and high visibility in searches. Considered as a Bytes saver, Loads Fast, and Uses less bandwidth.

Alt Tags are the text alternatives that make it easy for Google to read the image properly.

follow these rules to make proper use of ALT tags:

Describe images in simple English.
Images of products that have a model number or popular name must include the serial number/model/type in the alt tag.
Do not stuff keywords in alt tags.
Decorative images, must not include alt tags.

2 Use descriptive file name:

Using descriptive file name is important while trying to optimize images of online stores. SEO experts advise using clear and definite names like ‘optimize-Image-SEO.jpeg’ that can describe an image as well as its purpose. Almost every popular web designer in Kolkata uses descriptive file name in their client’s websites.

Use decreased image size files:

Use decreased size files as by decreasing the file size, you can increase the page loading speed and this, in turn, this decreases the number of customers moving away from your website.

Follow these ways to reduce image size and optimize images:

If reducing size is not possible, you can offer a small image and give the option, ‘click to view large image’.
Use Web Images as they have lesser size and are compatible to chrome as well as opera mini.
“Save for web’’ command in Adobe Photoshop, it can reduce the image size.This way you can convert an image to lowest size image without affecting the image quality.
Use compressed images to make product pictures load quickly.

Use original size images:

If you have an e-commerce store, you should use unique images for displaying products that you sell online, make sure that you are using a fresh, new and a unique image that has previously not been used on any other website.

Add interesting, unique and eye-catching images so to attract visitors. So to engage your customers into conversations and to convert them into potential leads, make use of visual content to advertise services.

Choose the right image format:

JPG: It is the most commonly used image format, as JPG can be easily compressed.

PNG (8-bit/24-bit): Choose PNG images over GIFs if they meet your requirements.

GIF: GIFs are not used for big images. You can use GIFs for displaying icons, thumbnails or creative images on your website.

Use codes instead of images:

Use embed images in a web page using Data URLs. Most of the famous web developers like website designer in Kolkata uses as fewer images as possible and instead of that they use well-curated codes.

7 .Use lazy load images:

Making use of lazy loading, using it you can make sure that the page loads fast and users don’t leave your site impatiently.

Reduce HTTP requests:

Using CSS, you can unify many images to reduce HTTP requests and show only what you want. By merging all small images into one, you can save loading time to a great extent. For an e-commerce website, this can be a most important aspect, this is why most e-commerce design company in Kolkata uses better CSS structure, hence minimize HTTP requests.

Use image optimizing tools:

There are various tools to optimize images, you can use Image Magick for JPG, PNG & GIFs, the suitability of a tool depends on the image format.

Use picture elements:

Usually, large sized images need a lot of resizing so as to make it appropriate for devices. To solve this problem opt for Picture element that helps display images as per users’ viewport.

Add image sitemaps:

Google is unable to crawl images that are not in the web page source. To help Google crawl them ,list the location of all images in image sitemap. Users buying decision majorly depends on product images.

Final Words:

Images are the heart of any posts, 80 % of the users who read any post only look for headings and images rather than judging all the text. So for making a better impression over customers it is important to have fully optimized images in each post.

If you wish to have a web developer who can manage image optimization with various codes and tweaks than nothing can be the best option rather than web design company in Kolkata.