Recently we had a unique challenge of launching a site with multiple high resolution images on several of their pages. While the site looked good it was taking several seconds to load on mobile devices with slower internet connections. We used a few simple tools to help analyze the problem and then to ultimately provide a site that loaded faster without sacrificing the quality of the images. In addition to the optimizing we applied in house, we gave the client some suggestions to help compress images to help maintain the site’s performance because large or high resolution images will have an effect on continued performance.
The current tool of choice for image compression from our developers is kraken.io. Here are a few helpful tips tips for using this compression tool. To start try “Lossy” compression first – this will compress the images more. There is a chance quality might be affected here, but if it looks good, use this because it will be the best for performance. If the quality is not good enough with the above compression, the next option is “Lossless” compression. This will improve quality, but not as optimal for performance. Keep in mind the more the compression= smaller files = faster load speed. Also, this compression tool supports multiple file upload, so you are able to batch multiple images to compress which will save a great deal of time!