The speed that your radio station website loads matters – maybe more than you realize.  Overall, we have grown increasingly impatient with the amount of time we’re willing to wait for things to load. In fact, many studies show that about forty percent of people will click off a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. This can have real, tangible impacts on any business whose website is underperforming in the speed department.

There are many different factors that can affect your site speed like your hosting plan and the code that makes up your website. Optimizing these factors is often too technical and daunting for the average person. However, image size can play a major role in website speed, and just about anyone can quickly learn how to optimize images for their website.

What Image Size and Dimensions Are Best?

The first step in optimization is bringing the image down to the proper dimensions. Some cropping may be required to get the image to the proper size that your website requires.

It’s likely that your content manager knows the proper sizes that all images should be. This should be passed down and followed by everyone who creates content for the website.

Which Image Format is Best?

Choosing the best image file format depends on the type of image and your end goal.

Here is the best application for each image format:

JPG: Best overall use and widely accepted but optimize them to their smallest file size without sacrificing quality. Does NOT support transparency.

PNG: Typically, file sizes are 2-3 times larger than JPG files. A major plus is that they support transparency, so they should be reserved for that use.

GIF: Small file size due to limited color palate. GIF file support animation. However, animation of GIF files has been disabled in some modern browsers and shown with a play button.

SVG: SVG is a vector format that works better for logos. SVG files can be sized to any dimension, and you’ll never see pixelation occur. SVG files do not work well for photos.

WebP/AVIF: These newer/modern image formats are better at image compression and have been designed to have small file sizes. Both allow for transparency. However, some browsers, content management systems, and applications are slow to adopt them. (This should change though.)

Which Image Resolution is Best?

When exporting or converting your scaled-down images to any of the previously mentioned formats, there are some extra settings that will need to be tweaked to ensure your image is the smallest file size while looking clear.

Since every image is different, there’s no one set value here that will work best for every application, so plan to adjust this with each image you edit.

Saving Your Optimized Images

It’s important that every image you upload to your radio station website be saved without spaces. Spaces within filenames can cause problems with some content management systems and applications.

Adding image meta tags will be vital in years to come and more legislation gets passed to better allow people with visual disabilities to better “see” the internet.

Wrapping Up

Optimizing photos for your site isn’t always easy and will likely take some experimentation and testing. But once you get your image optimization process down, your website’s speed will improve as well as your overall user experience.

If your content creators are slow to get on board with this, it’s time to motivate them to act.

Need help with your radio station website? We’d love to help. Please reach out to us at https://www.skyrocketradio.com.