Reduce the Size of Your Images: WordPress Image Optimization Guide

Sure you were in situation when a website you want to open is loading “for ages” and you are bored and frustrated, so you just leave it without hesitation. Lots of things can make a website heavy: the loading speed depends on the hosting, GIF animations “weight”, amount of http requests, and of course the size of images you upload. In this post we will talk of the key things you need to know about image optimization to make your web pages load as fast as possible.

Why compressing?

Firstly, let’s define the main benefits of compressing images for the Web:

1. Of course it improves your load speed;
2. You get a better Google Page Speed score;
3. More visitors will stay on your page for longer, so you reduce your bounce rate;
4. You get a chance to improve your conversion rate;
5. You will need less storage space on your server ‘cause the optimized images take less resources of the server.

What are the most popular image formats?

As you probably know, the most popular image formats today are PNG and JPG. JPG is a more wide spread format used for stock photos, images and illustrations as well as those used on most modern websites. PNG is another popular format for images mostly used when it’s necessary to save a photo with the transparent background.

Ways to Optimize Your Images

Depending on the maximum width available for the large image size in your WordPress media library, you can instantly resize the image to that definite width in pixels. Initially, the given image was 1500×996 px by size and 881 kb big so you can resize it easily.

For instance you’ve got the maximum width of 1024 px.

Upload an original image which is 1500×996 px in size into your media library.

Click the Edit Image button and scale the image to 1024×680 px in size.

Now it is 544 kb big, so it is better optimized for a website.

Free Online Tools for Image Compression

There are many more ways to compress the image and optimize it for the Web. Further is the list of free image compressing services with the best traffic rank, this means that people regularly use these popular tools for optimizing their photos.

Of course if you consider there should be some more services in this list, you can suggest them in the comments.

We will use every of the following services to compress our given image and see which tool is better.

TinyPNG

A very intuitive and simple free service where you just have to upload the images and get them compressed. You can upload up to 20 images at once, max 5 mb each.

We upload our file, and it is identified by Panda character as 907.2 kb big, so after the compression it is 374. 2 kb big. This online tool has saved you 59% – 529 kb in total.

Optimizilla

Another simple online service which is absolutely free and allows to upload up to 20 images and instantly compress them. The service supposes the opportunity to set the quality setting. By default it is 90, but you can change it if you require.

In this case our image is identified as 882 kb big, and after compression it weights 498 kb which saves 44% – 384 kb in total.

Compressor

A good online tool for compressing images. However, it has no bulk upload option and you can add just one image at a time to compress it. The file size limit is 10 mb.

So our original image is defined as 907, 72 kb, and after the compression it weights 382, 43 kb which saves you 58% – 525, 29 kb in total.

As you see, TinyPNG wins this small comparison contest saving you 59% in total.

There are also some premium online image compressing tools where you can sign up for free and then buy one of the available plans to use all of the service’s features without limitation.

Premium Image Compression Plugins

In addition we’ve selected a few premium plugins from Themeforest which suit your aims the best. Please check them out:

Automatic Image Compression & Bulk Image Compression for WordPress

This is a great plugin which allows to optimize and compress all of your images with simplicity. You will be able to automatically compress JPEG/PNG/GIF images on upload, compress your already uploaded images with bulk image compression, improve your SEO, use Lossless compression and of course make your website faster.

WP Google PageSpeed Insights Image Optimizer

A plugin for those who struggle with Google saying their images can be optimized better. It now has an ability to scan a theme and a plugin directory for images and optimize them. The developers used Google PageSpeed API, so the plugin has exactly the same compression as Google PageSpeed. It works out of the box.

Hakros Images Optimizer

A software which helps to reduce the size of your images up to 95% and without changing the original resolution. The main features of the tool include incredible compression ratio, keeping the original file format, compressing multiple images at once (bulk uploading), no maximum file size restrictions.

Conclusion:

As you see it is possible to compress images in a few different ways either choosing a free or a paid-for solution or just using a simple method of resizing the photo in WordPress media library. Anyway, when you compress your images before uploading them on your website, you make your web-page SEO-friendly and fast.