{"id":20,"date":"2021-09-23T02:06:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-23T02:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/?p=20"},"modified":"2024-03-07T11:30:30","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T11:30:30","slug":"reasons-images-slow-websites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/reasons-images-slow-websites\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Reasons Your Images Are Slowing Down Your Website (And How To Fix it)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Are you wondering why images are loading slow on your site, or they take forever to load? You’re reading the right article. Let’s start with two important things to know: images make up a large percentage of website traffic, so optimizing your images can help reduce the time it takes for them to load. At the same time, images are often the culprit of performance issues: they take up the loading resources, and that’s why they slow down your WordPress site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Images are responsible for the highest number of HTTP requests – source: Almanac.http archives<\/a>
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The thing is, it\u2019s hard to imagine a website with no images or pictures at all. Using SEO-optimized images can even drive more traffic to your website<\/a>. We can\u2019t do business without them! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this blog post, we’ve outlined six reasons images are slowing down your site. Plus, you’ll learn how you can make photos load faster on your site (including on mobile devices<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Your Images Load Slow on WordPress (Or Take Forever to Load)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1. Images are too large (and you may be using too many)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to web page speed, the first thing you should do is optimize your heavy images. Larger-sized high resolutions can take up a lot of bandwidth and slow down loading times for visitors on your site – so why not upload them in a smaller size? But also, don’t let the quality of your images suffer! Use reliable and effective applications for image compression. This will ensure that while you’re reducing their size, they are still being maintained in visual fidelity with little loss in quality.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Images have unspecified dimensions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Scaling images appropriately is important to avoid website images taking too long to load. Do not let the browser scale images instead of you – that would give it more data to load. In other words, the browser will still load the entire image. If you have an image that is 2000 x 2000 pixels, but you have scaled it down to 200 x 200 pixels, your browser will have to load ten times more than necessary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Images are not optimized according to the device<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To prevent images from loading slowly, your page should never render images that are larger than the version displayed on the user’s screen. In simple words, anything larger than the device results in wasted bytes and slows down your page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. The browser starts loading images all at once<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By default, your browser tries to load everything at the same time. If you don\u2019t prioritize the images that need to be loaded first, the browser will be busy rendering them all at once. Focus on the most important images that need to load in the viewport of the visitor instead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. You use heavy formats <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The size of your images is only part of the problem. The file types you use can also take up valuable space. Are you using a format like .TIFF or BMP? In that case, remember that TIFF is an uncompressed format that renders a more detailed picture and contains more data\u2026 This will create larger files and end up taking a lot of storage space. If you are not using .TIFF but JPEG and PNG instead, you should know that you could use even lighter formats, as you’ll find out in the next section. A simple conversion can give your image a little boost!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Your cache doesn\u2019t store images<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The main benefit of caching an image is to improve the performance of your WordPress site. The user should view the images or Javascript and CSS files directly from his system instead of waiting for them to download over a network connection. In other words, your images should be cached in a temporary local folder to avoid unnecessary pings to the database.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to Fix Images Loading Slowly on Your Site<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Images are crucial for content strategy, but we don\u2019t want them to take too long to load. The key is to use them properly to avoid slowing down your WordPress site.  Let\u2019s see the six techniques you can use to improve images loading on your WordPress site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Resize and compress images<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If you want to speed up your images, you should always optimize your photos by resizing and compressing them. Lossy and lossless compression<\/a> are two methods commonly used to optimize your website for faster load time, ultimately speeding up the page load. Those two high-level tactics are well explained in our guide about how to reduce image size without losing quality<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n