Happy World Photography Day! Here’s How You Should Be Using Images On Your Website

Images are everything. Well, not everything, but they take over half of the websites’ overall bandwidth. Some designs require even more! Unfortunately, many web designers still don’t know how to handle images, making all sorts of silly mistakes. Today it stops. Here’s how you should be using images on your website.

How you should be using images on your website

Let’s start with the obvious: we all want the best when it comes to quality. Imagine paying for a quality image and not being able to use it. Well, here’s the harsh truth: you can’t use raw files or PNGs that weigh a lot. The lighter — the better. Optimizing images is as important as making them, so experiment with lower-quality JPGs, and use the exact size you need. A few apps make your life easier — you don’t even need to use Photoshop.

Also, WebP images take up less space than similar images in JPEG and PNG formats – usually, they can take 30% less space. This allows you to reduce page sizes and increase productivity. WebP supports both lossy and lossless compression.

Another thing many of us forget is needless metadata. Whenever you make a picture, your camera writes quite a lot of Metadata into it. Data like the date, the location, the model of your camera or a phone, shutter speed, etc. Nobody needs that info, and it takes up space! So, make sure all metadata is wiped clean, whether it’s your photo or a user-uploaded picture.

Next, do you know where to put your images? If you answer “on my site’s server,” you are very wrong. That is a good way of putting unnecessary strain on your server. Instead, use Content Delivery Networks, which are faster and more protected. CDN are a bit more expensive, but they are worth it.

Cache settings also matter a lot. Caching can be handy: once your users have visited your site, they can automatically save the images to their devices, speeding up the process of loading the website. But without adding a fingerprint to your images, you won’t be able to get rid of errors, like when your users see the older versions of your images. Fingerprints solve that issue,

Now, where do you find quality photos? Google? Think again. That’s the last place you should use. Instead, try the most popular resources like Unsplash, Pexels, Stocksnap, Freestocks, etc. Sometimes hiring a photographer is the only way to go.