How to Get Most from Your Images and The Whole Website Development Experience

I genuinely believe that delivering sites with high-quality images across all devices is extremely important. That’s why I make sure I offer an engaging experience for all users. To help me achieve that I have worked to put together this article for your convenience.

It presents some important insights based on the image related questions I get from my clients. It will help you get the most from your images and the website development experience as a whole.

Q: What’s the ideal image size to use for websites?

Take note that you need to supply your images in the most optimal upload ready format. Doing this will not just help you save a huge amount of time in the development stage, but it will make sure you accomplish your preferred result when it comes to the visual effect.

You also need to consider that in the post-development process. That’s especially true if you want to upload the image content to the website. The crucial thing to keep in mind here is what the image will be used for and where it will be used.

For instance, are you going to use it as a banner? A cover image? Or maybe an icon or thumbnail? A smaller picture taken on an iPhone might look good in some areas of your website. However, it will not work as an enlarged feature image.

As a general rule, make sure you supply images to your development team in the most high-resolution format possible, allowing them to be resized properly for upload. On top of that, you want to make sure they are the correct size to show on your website. Using any smaller images and will likely be too pixelated or blurry for use.
Are you the one in charge of the upload? Then it will help if you use a file size of less than 600KB. Use an image with dimensions between 1500 and 2500 pixels wide for the best outcomes.

Q: Will the images I use have an impact on the website’s loading speed?

Simply put, the bigger the image size, the higher the display quality will be. Nonetheless, take note that using and uploading files that are excessively large could hurt your site’s loading page.

In turn, that could lead to your users losing patience and just leaving your website altogether. That’s the last time you want to experience it, right? That’s why sticking to the file dimensions and size stated earlier will help you prevent such problems within that aspect.

WordPress will create multiple versions of your image to display in allocated breakpoints on different devices, so there is no need to upload various sizes for each responsive web browser representation.

Q: What’s the ideal way to save my image files?

Are you delivering your image files? You need to make sure the images are saved as either a .png for graphics files or a .jpg for photos. Keep in mind that the following image files are not compatible in the web:

.DOC
.TTF
.PDS
.PDF

What’s more, image names could serve as the alt text on your website where no text is presented. It helps search engines identify what the image is all about, making it more likely to appear on the search results.

As a tip from a freelance web designer, make sure you provide your files with clear, short, and descriptive names, normally eight words or less. Doing so will make it simple for users to reference and stick to simple hyphens, underscores, letters, and numbers.
As much as possible, stay away from using rogue characters like percentage signs or questions marks. That’s because those can upload erroneously or cause unexpected behaviour in your galleries.

For example, your current image name is IMG_0002004.jpg. As an alternative, you can change that into something descriptive like man-drinking-coffee-11.jpg

Q: Is it important to consider aspects like orientation or aspect ratio?

You may not know it yet, but supplying images with a constant aspect ratio (width: height) is unnecessary, but it can help you have a lighter and simpler development process. Further, it will be much simpler to expect how your images will crop.
Besides, you can spread the courtesy of rotating pictures wherever needed to make sure they are oriented so they must be visible on the site.

Q: My images have been cropped. How does that happen?

It is more likely that some of the pictures you show on your site will need to be cropped to fit the available space. That’s especially applicable when we talk about your mobile design.

For instance, a big banner image on your desktop design might be cropped down to at least half of its original size to properly fit a mobile screen. You can check out this article to find out more practical tips on why and how your images are cropped for your site.

Q: I want to supply my logo or similar graphics. How should I do that?

Would you like to supply your logo files or any other similar graphics on your site? Then make sure these images are vector files.
Keep in mind that vector images are resolution and zoom independent. Meaning, the clarity and quality will be sustained whatever size you’re displaying the graphic throughout your website.

Final Thoughts

To sum up, you should not underestimate the value of you’re the quality and size of the images you upload to your website. Using and uploading poor quality images on your site can substantially cheapen your brand and services. Worse, it can cause your website to load slowly, leading your website visitors to just leave the site completely.
When we talk about your images, take the time to get them right the first time. It will help you accomplish a professional finish at the end and a website that efficiently converts your site visitors into loyal customers.

I hope you find this post informative and helpful. Now that you fully understand the importance of using high-quality images on your website, it’s time that you take the next step. Are you still unsure if you can do it right? Feel free to hire web design companies in Berkshire to help you in this matter…