Image Optimization
Did you know that you could save money by optimizing your images? You see not all images are created equal. Hosting an image that is a large file size could be costing you disk space, bandwidth and money.
Keep More of Your Online Visitors
Now not only is it a good idea to optimize your images to save on disk space, bandwidth and money. It is also a good idea to get your images to the smallest file size possible to save visitors too. Is somebody going to stick around your web site if it takes 45 seconds for that image on your web site to load? I think not.
How to Optimize Your Web Site Images
So what is the rule of thumb to follow when it comes to optimizing your images for the Web? Get your images to the lowest file size possible, with the best looking results.
Three of the most popular image formats are .gif, .jpg, and .png. The .jpg (or .jpeg) format should be used for photos of people, places and things. The .gif and .png formats should be used for graphics, logos, and everything else.
Now if you are using a graphics program like Paint Shop Pro or Paint.net, you might have to play with your settings some to get it to the right balance between quality and file size. There are also a number of online image optimizers you might want to try:
- Dynamic Drive Image Optimizer – This free tool lets you easily optimize your gifs, animated gifs, jpgs, and pngs, so they load as fast as possible on your site. Furthermore, you can easily convert from one image type to another.
- ImageOptimizer.net – Using this free online service, you can resize, compress and optimize your image files. Using the service is as easy as clicking of button!
- Smush.it – Performance just got a little bit easier. Optimizing images by hand is time consuming and painful. Smush it does it for you.
So consider this your weekend project. Go check out your Lunarpages powered web hosting plans, and see what images on your web sites might need to be shrunk to save you bandwidth, disk space, money and visitors!
