Pictures can help you create more attractive websites, so it is great to use them. However, if you use a lot of images, if you do not optimize them, you may reduce the speed of the website. This is why you are interested in learning how to load images faster.
Fortunately, you can implement many strategies to accelerate your images, whether it affects the quality of its photo.
In this article, we will share a comprehensive guide to how to load the images you use on the website faster.
We will first share six key strategies to speed up image loading. We will then show you how to use two WordPress plugins that are suitable for beginners to implement these strategies on your WordPress website.
How to load photos faster: Six performance strategies
In the first part, we will discuss the strategy you can implement to make your image be loaded on your website more quick. Then, in the next section, we will show you how to implement all these strategies on WordPress.
You can consider this part as \”
theory
\”, and the next part will It is deemed to be \” operating method \”. If you want to know what makes the image load faster, please continue to read! The following is the six strategies you can use to accelerate your website.
is roughly
Sort by importance:
Compressed photos.
Adjust the photo size.
Converted photos to webp and other optimization formats.
Use the content delivery network (CDN) to speed up the image time (especially for visitors far away from your website custody).
Delayed the image.
Enable the browser cache to speed up subsequent visits.
The first three strategies process the optimization of the image file itself, and the latter three strategies focus on optimizing your website to load these image files.
Let’s take a look at how these strategies speed up the loading speed of images on WordPress.
1. Compressed image
Photo compression can allow youReduce the file size of the image without changing its size. Compressed by deleting redundant/unnecessary information and applying various algorithms to reduce file size.
There are two types of compression:
No loss
-The file size decreases slightly without changes.
Damage
– The size of the file is greatly reduced, but the image quality may be lost. Damaged compression has different levels -some may not even see it, and more radical algorithms may have a significant impact.
You can learn more about our articles about damage and non -destructive images.
For most websites, you can use damaged compression. However, if you are a photographer or in other industries that are crucial in image quality, you may want to adhere to the use of non -destructive compression.
If you use damaged compression, you can save some considerable costs. For example, we use Imagify to compress a simple JPG image.
IMAGIFY is a free image optimization tool, which we will introduce the latter part of this guide.
After using the loss and compression on the test image, we can reduce the size from 133.7 kb to 36.9 kb, and the quality has almost no change- The size of the file is about 73%
]:
2. Adjust the image size Above, we told you that photo compression can allow you to change the file size of the image without changing its size. But in most cases, you do
hope to change the image size, which is where the size of the photo is adjusted.
In the same conditions, the larger the size of the image, the larger the file size. The larger the file, the slower the image loading.
For the website, you should try to adjust the image size to the exact size you are using. For example, if the content area of \u200b\u200byour website is 800 pixel width, you need to adjust the image size to 800 pixels ( or may double it to 1,600 pixels to consider high -resolution display such as Retina screen ).
How much? This is a fast test showFor example, we just adjusted the image size without adding any compression:
If you combine the compression and adjust the size, you can achieve some incredible reduction in the image size
. For example, after using imagify compression to adjust the size of the size, we further reduced it to 101 KB.
Therefore, only by adjusting the image size and compressed image, we dropped it from 380 kb to 101 101 KB, the quality is almost zero (
Assuming you display it on the website
). 3. Converted photos to webp Webp is a modern image format from Google, which can provide a smaller file size than JPEG or PNG without lowering quality. On average, webp images are 25-34%smaller than similar JPEG images, 26%smaller than similar PNG images.
In order to benefit from these size saving, you can convert them to webp when uploading the image to the WordPress site.
To understand more information about this format, please see our webp image complete guide.
4. Use content delivery network (CDN)
CDN is essentially just a global server network all over the world. If you configure the WordPress site to use CDN, you can host all the photos (and other static files) of your site on this server network.
Then, the visitors of your website will be able to photos from the recent network location of them, and There is no need to photos directly from your website’s hosting server.
By reducing the physical distance that the image file needs to be transmitted, they will load faster for your visitors.
If the audience of your website is distributed in a wide range of geographical areas (such as multiple countries or continents), fast CDN is particularly useful. However, if your website only targets people with specific geographical locations (such as your local city), then you may not notice how much improvement of the loading time of using CDN.
5. Delayed loading picture
The picture of the delay loading the WordPress website can limit the impact of photos on the overall loading time of the website.
In essence, delay loading allows you to wait for the visitor to see the image outside the viewport. On the contrary, your website will only load the image in time when the visitors start rolling down.
Even if there are many images on the page, this will lead to faster initial loading time.
6. Enable the browser cache
Browser cache will not wo n’t Make the photo load faster when people visit your website once. But
It will immediately speed up the image loading speed for subsequent access
. How? Well, the browser cache allows you to tell the visitors that the browser of the visitors stores the image of your website on the visitor’s local computer ( in the browser cache ). Once the visitor ed the image during the first visit, they will be able to load these images from the local browser cache during subsequent visit, which will lead to faster load time.
How to use WordPress plug -in accelerated image to load
Now, let’s see how to implement six strategies to load images on the WordPress website faster. You only need two plug -in to set everything:
Imagify -you will use it to optimize the image file itself.
WP Rocket -You will use it to optimize your website to provide the visitors with these image files.
IMAGIFY -compression, adjustment, and converting into Webp
Imagify is an easy WordPress plug -in, which can process the first three optimization techniques in our list.
After the configuration, it will automatically optimize the following strategy to optimize all the images you upload to WordPress: [123 ]
Use non -destructive, medium -loss or radical compressed images.
Adjust the image size to some maximum size.
Convert the image to webp and provide it to the visitors. You can also click batch adjustment andExisting photos of the compression site. First, install and activate the free Imagify plug -in from WordPress.org. After activating the plug -in, it will prompt you to enter the API key so that you can connect the WordPress site to the Imagify optimization service.
To get your API key, you can register a free image account. You will be able to optimize the image of 20 MB per month for free (about 200 images
).
If you need to exceed these restrictions, the paid plan of 500 MB (about 5,000 images) is charged $ 4.99 per month, and the monthly charging is $ 9.99. You can use paid plans on unlimited WordPress websites.
After getting the API key, you can stick it to the box, then click [123 ] Connect me
:
Then, turn to setting → imagine your image optimization set up. At the top, You can choose the required compression level . There is also a visual comparison that can help you test different levels:
If you roll downwards,
You can you can Let Imagify automatically converts the image to a webp and display them to the visitors. For webp pictures, we recommend using \u0026 lt; picture \u0026 gt; label method:
123] You can tell Imagify to adjust the size of the large image to a certain size (based on width). Similarly, we recommend setting the width of the content area of \u200b\u200byour website (or if you want to provide higher resolution images for the RETINA screen, you can set it to twice):
[ 123]
That’s it! Now, imagified will be automaticTurn all new images you upload to WordPress . If there are many existing images on your website, you can let Imagify optimize them in batches:
] WP Rocket -Browser cache, delay loading and CDN
WP Rocket is a complete WordPress performance plug -in, which can accelerate your entire website and implement our discussion. Optimized strategies for photos. This includes:
Implement the browser cache. Delayed the image.
Connected to CDN.
In addition, it can also help improve non -image performance, such as page cache, code optimization, and so on.
To set up, you must first buy and install WP Rocket.
Once activated,
It will automatically enable the page cache and browser cache . To visit other settings, transfer to the settings in the dashboard → WP Rocket.
To enable delay loading
, you can transfer to the \”Media\” tab And select the box to delay loading the image (and video, if necessary). You can also let WP Rocket add a missing image size, which is another useful optimization technique:
] To set CDN , you can transfer to the CDN tab. The easiest way to get started is to use the RocketCDN service. It only costs $ 7.99 a month to get infinite bandwidth. Alternatively, WP Rocket can also help you integrated with other services such as Bunny CDN, KeyCDN or Stackpath.
If you do use the CDN and you configure the image to use \u0026 lt; picture \u0026 gt; label method method If you provide a webp image, you need to return the IMAGIFY settings (settings → Imagify) and enter your CDN URL in the webp settings box.
Let you todayImage loading faster If you use a lot of photos on the website, it is important to optimize them to make your website quickly load. In this article, we introduced a variety of methods to speed up photos loading.
First, you should optimize the image file itself.Using Imagify, you can compress, adjust the size and convert it to webp to ensure that your image file size is as small as possible.
Then you can also use WP Rocket to optimize your use and loading image on the website through strategies such as CDN, browser cache and delay loading.
Do you have any questions about how to load your image on your WordPress website faster?
Let’s know in the comments!
If there are many existing images on your website, you can let Imagify optimize them in batches: 
Delayed the image. 
In this article, we introduced a variety of methods to speed up photos loading.
