A scenario where anyone must rely on descriptions and a wavering imagination to visualize the product would lead to displeasure when the product doesn’t match their unrealistic expectations.
Back in the days, tele-callers would find it hard to convince you to invest in an item. Such was the apprehension that no consumer would book a product without referring to a catalog. Why, because the catalog held relevant imagery.
Even face to face, people find it hard to convey the features of something. Let’s accept it; humans are incapable of reading minds; therefore, they will need some visual element to grasp the exact product.
Giving your customers supportive images to ease their shopping experience and make your store more reliable for future purchases.
The images that get uploaded must satisfy a whole host of other conditions as well. Whether it connects with the products being sold, appeals to your audience, the page load times, types, dimensions and so on.
Once added and optimized well, these images can boost the traffic and improve the retention rates; which will then no doubt translate into higher conversion rates for your webstore.
No matter what, don’t leave the images out. Factor these useful graphic elements to elevate the overall status of your store and edge out the competition.
Need for Media
Images are helpful to the overall narrative on the webpage. Besides, adding gloss, they assist viewers with the decision-making process. A 360o photography of your SKU’s will give a better insight to the visitor.
So, why leave them out. Embed these and boost your site’s power of luring and retaining customers. Images bring that X-factor on your site, which quotes, texts and paragraphs could never deliver.
Pictures captivate people and engage them for longer. Precisely, what you want to conquer in this modern era of eCommerce evolution, images will reinforce the worth of a product and improve the likelihood of conversions.
The most artistic traits of your product; like the craftsmanship on shoes, designer bags, fashionable garments and so on, need to be highlighted in rich detail and images accomplish this goal with remarkable accuracy. Your business can depend on them to give adequate sales.
Optimizing the Images
Images make up a substantial percentage of the total content on a webpage. Hence, it’s also paramount that you adjust the optimization of these elements on the webpage, right after inserting them.
Reduce the weight and not the quality of the image. For the sake of bringing the lowest file size, don’t lower the details in the picture; some of which could be essential in assisting the consumer.
Reducing an image to a tiny fraction of its original size is an approach that often leads to a severe amount of visual depreciation. A blurred image gives off all the wrong vibes and immediately tempts the visitor to look elsewhere.
On an image-rich website, you will also need to be aware to keep request sizes down. As a faster loading time will improve your user’s willingness to stay on the page. So, don’t waste their precious bandwidth with oversized, unoptimized images. Use image optimizers for web and improve the loading speeds.
With a good chunk of traffic on any webstore coming from mobile and tablets, the crowd there expects faster loading times and pleasant navigation w.r.t images. Any delay will lead to disappointment; which will make them desert your site forever.
Best Practices
How you go about the optimization on your website is equally important, there are many ways to perform the same; here’s listing a few approaches that you can take to arrive at the best output:
- File Types - JPEG is best for product images as they allow for the display of millions of colors and allows you to adjust the file size. PNG - 8 allows only 256 colors whereas PNG-24 allows millions of colors and is best to use when image quality is more important than file size.
GIF’s also allows only 256 colors and is the best option when it comes to displaying animated stuff without taking up a lot of size. Can be used for small thumbnails, icons, and logos.
- File size – Keep the image file size small to improve conversions, as each image must load when you visit a webpage, thus the overall time to finish rendering the page is affected. Larger images take up more space on the server, take longer to load thus breaking the performance of your site.
- Naming – Image names must be kept as precise as possible to assist the search engines in discovering your content. Change the names to be more descriptive, explanatory, to the point so that the search bots can detect what the image is showing. Random numbers and vague symbols will not direct the search results towards your webpage. Use straightforward labeling to help the search bots discover your pictures.
- Alt Tags – Alt tags are descriptions given to an image within your website’s code. The image content is essentially written into the code. These tags come in handy for visually impaired people as the assistive tech will read the description out loud,
In case of loading issues, this line of code will notify the browser what’s supposed to be there, which will help the SEO crawlers to determine the stuff within the image. - Sitemaps - Search engine web crawlers will find it easy to navigate your site more intelligently when there is a map for all your site’s content. For any image embedded, use location, Title, Description, and Caption. Use SEO tools to add your images to a sitemap automatically.
- Thumbnails – The goal is to get the thumbnail images to load, whether on the product page or as a recommended product at checkout for Cross-Selling. In a scenario where these enticing visual elements take time to load; you stand to lose plenty of sales.
- A/B Testing – Never accept a single kind/type for any of the graphics on your site. Bring about changes from time to time to test various formats, sizes, dimensions, and quality; before you finalize the one that best suits your purpose. Experiment to find the best settings for each page.
- CDN – Content Delivery Networks are a go-to option for brands that wish to host images and media files to elevate your page load speeds and solve bandwidth issues. Especially if you get global traffic and your image servers are located away from where your traffic originates.
Trends
The fads for embedding media elements have evolved dramatically over the years. There are no creative boundaries that’d prevent an artist from sharing the content in a clear and visually stimulating manner. Be it infographics or meta images; creators are trying it all.
As such, graphic designers are trying different formats and ways in which their idea can be presented to the audience; Ultimately, you want their recognition to improve the chances of order completion.
Let’s look at some of the latest trends that the visitors will find visually speaking:
- Cinemagraph - Still photographs in which a minor and repeated movement occurs. One element within the image is static, while the rest of it moves to create an effect that can leave your readers awestruck. Use them effectively, to bring your pictures to life and to leave a better impact on users.
Contemporary companies around the world use this on websites, banner ads, social media accounts and email campaigns to advertise, tell stories, and create an immersive experience.
- Indexical - Use such images in your visual storytelling and make the webpage more attractive to the visitor. Images that evoke specific emotions without the need to detail anything in-depth. Using kittens and puppies to convey happiness or using a tragic shot to express loss and negativity.
- Progress GIF’s – A great way to include a GIF and make it interesting for your consumers. A unique way to present your products, in which you get to see the progress of how something has changed or developed.
Making it very useful to showcase the initial and final designs; be it in fashion, jewelry, footwear, and even automobiles. Daze your audience and give the message you wish to send.
Tools
When it comes to Image optimization, there is no shortage of image optimizer tools. Every known resource on the internet claims to bring the right balance of speed and quality.
Thus, you need a comprehensive understanding to evaluate the ones that best serve the above purpose. A tool that varies the dimension but heavily compromises the quality or gives a high-resolution image that will eat all the bandwidth; causing slow page loads and leads to abandonment.
Here’s listing some of the well-renowned tools that can help you to manage images effectively: -
- Kraken – An Image compression tool that lets you upload files in bulk and optimizes them for the lowest file size to accelerate your website. A robust ultra-fast compressor with the best-in-class algorithms to save your bandwidth, storage space and improve the website’s load times.
Run your images through Kraken and witness the drastic drop in image sizes. Optimize pictures from within your applications using the fully-featured and easy-to-use API. - EWWW Image Optimizer Cloud - Will automatically optimize the new images and already uploaded images; optionally convert your images to the best file format. Get to choose between pixel perfect or high compression options that are visually lossless.
With EWWW you are not limited by file size, get intelligent conversion options (JPG, PNG, etc.), no charges on uncompressed images and attain secure communication with top SSL encryption. - ShortPixel - An image optimization and compression API plus WordPress plugin that helps to improve your website performance; where the resultant smaller images don’t suffer from a diminished quality, comes with both lossy and lossless optimization.
Provides batch optimization, quick backups, and uses powerful algorithms to with less bandwidth usage to give super-fast websites. Install to your WordPress dashboard and get started. - TinyPNG – Using smart lossy compression to reduce the overall size of your PNG images. A very selective process that targets the number of colors in the image; barely any loss in quality but brings about
Using intelligent techniques to analyze the best possible JPEG encoding for your images. Even comes with its Photoshop version to scale, preview and save compressed PNG and JPEG images.
Conclusion
Once you have optimized your images to ensure the best performance on your eCommerce site; the traffic to your site will immediately start rolling. The hits, Click Through rates, retention times and conversions will follow.
Use WordPress image optimizer plugins, that compress and optimize images externally on their servers. Which in turn, will reduce the load on your site or rely on vector images for faster loading. Beyond this, remove any unnecessary image data or rely on a photo editing software to accomplish the job.
Use web fonts instead of placing text within images, use lossy compression where possible and save images as “optimized for web” in tools such as Photoshop. Witness your site becoming more search engine friendly, as the algorithm starts detecting your images better; leading to a higher ranking on Google.
Format the visual statements to prevent your site from slowing down the experience of the keen visitors on the site. A tedious clumsy session will undoubtedly dampen the mood of your guests.
Consult the experts at Virtina, who have over the years delivered the best optimization results for some of the leading brands in various industries worldwide. Our team of graphic designers and coding professionals are proficient in blending the best quality and size on any webpage of your choice.
Get in touch with us; if your website is lagging, crashes, experiences frequent errors or is made up of a gallery of images that consume too much bandwidth. We will perform a thorough audit to analyze the areas where your website is lacking and give those sections a significant boost.
Virtina can help you to increase your revenue, improve profit and enhance customer experience.
