Sophisticated images deliver a visual feast for today’s website visitors. With advanced graphics, however, comes the risk of slower page loading. This, in turn, limits your potential for achieving a user-friendly website and can have a negative impact on your organic search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
The rapid advancement of technologies ingrained in our daily activities has made people less patient. The average internet user nowadays wants their data fast. So it should come as little surprise that adding just a fraction of a second to page loading can dramatically increase bounce rates and reduce conversion rates. That is why many companies make unwanted compromises to pursue a faster website.
Thankfully, an excellent solution promises to speed up the loading process while still making it possible to feature the rich and aesthetically pleasing content that has taken over in recent years: dynamic images.
Designed to adapt to website visitors’ specific needs, dynamic images see swift alterations in fit, form, and display based on the device or browser a particular consumer is using. For example, someone with a 4K monitor will enjoy the detail and clarity of high-resolution images. At the same time, lower-resolution images – which are smaller in file size than their high-resolution counterparts – are provided as alternative images that can be utilized for display on smartphones.
This image flexibility is helpful for both developers and end-users. Previous limitations forced developers to limit optimized images to a few select dimensions and targeted devices. Because dynamic images are far less restricted based on loading concerns, they deliver a whole new world of creative possibility.
Deciding which SaaS platform you want to use for your image management often boils down to a few primary factors: need, budget, and lift needed to integrate into your website configuration. There are a variety of excellent services currently available, each with its own unique set of advantages and challenges.
Cloudinary provides a simplified setup for WordPress users, a preferred solution for optimizing PNG images. It offers cloud-based asset management with dynamic manipulation – image optimization occurs as the assets are delivered to your website(s) through several top content delivery networks (CDNs).
Cloudinary is unique in that it can also optimize and manage video assets. Videos tend to be much larger file sizes than images. This makes Cloudinary an excellent solution for websites with a significant amount of rich media that isn’t distributed through services like YouTube or Vimeo.
Like Cloudinary, Optimole is easy for WordPress site owners to integrate into their website. It tends to perform better on JPEG images but is also an excellent option for PNGs. While some manipulation functionality exists, Optimole primarily focuses on image optimization for display on the web – from image compression and resizing to switching to WebP versions of images.
Optimole’s images are served through the Amazon CloudFront CDN. Other advantages include unmetered bandwidth and smart lazy loading.
Whether you choose Cloudinary or Optimole as your preferred solution for dynamic image generation, you’ll benefit from faster page load times. This, in turn, will create happier website visitors and better search engine performance.
User experience now plays a prominent role in search engine optimization and digital marketing, making dynamic image generation much more important. The experts at Zero Gravity Marketing can help you implement this and other helpful practices to keep your website running smoothly. Contact us today to learn more!