Why Images Are Killing Your Website’s Speed (and How To Optimize Images for Web Use)

Why Your Website’s Speed Is Costing You Customers

Page speed is an important search engine ranking factor and it plays a huge role in user experience. Consumers have high expectations and low patience when it comes to loading time. You’ve worked hard to create a beautiful webpage and earn clicks from interested searchers; wouldn’t it be a shame if you lost them within a few seconds of arriving? 

A study conducted by Akamai, which analyzed data from over 10 billion user visits on top online retail websites, found that a two-second delay in load time increases bounce rates by 103%.

Around 47% of consumers expect a webpage to load in 2 seconds or less. If you aren’t meeting this standard, you are losing a significant portion of your hard-earned traffic before they even get the chance to look around. 

There are a number of factors that can contribute to slow page load and some of them are complex issues that you would need a professional developer to solve. However, lack of image optimization typically plays a big role in slowing down the average website and it’s a relatively easy fix. 

If you’re looking for a quick way to speed up your website, use our tips below to learn how to create optimized images for the web.

How to Check Your Website’s Speed (The 2-Second Rule)

You can use Google’s Pagespeed Insights (PSI) tool to assess the speed of your webpages. When it analyzes your website, PSI runs Lighthouse to collect lab data on your site and also collects real-world field data. The 3 Core Web Vitals are important metrics that PSI uses to measure page load. Here’s Google’s explanation of the Core Web Vitals: 

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): measures loading performance. To provide a good user experience, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading.

First Input Delay (FID): measures interactivity. To provide a good user experience, pages should have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): measures visual stability. To provide good user experience, pages should maintain a CLS of less than 0.1.

The #1 Culprit: Why Images Slow You Down

HTTP Archive reports that on average, images account for 21% of page weight, with the only heavier item being video content. Most beginner developers and website owners don’t know how to optimize large images for web use, and this results in web pages that are far heavier (and slower) than they need to be. 

You should make it a goal to reduce the total page size to 1-2 MB or less. Image optimization is all about trying to reduce your larger file sizes as much as possible without ruining image quality. By implementing the right best practices, it is possible to reduce image file sizes by 80% without any visible loss in image quality. 

When optimizing images for better performance, you should find a good balance of these three factors: 

• Image Size/Dimensions 
• Image Compression
• Image File Format 

How to Optimize Images: A 3-Step Guide

Step 1: Resize Your Image Dimensions

A photo straight from your phone or digital camera might be over 4,000 pixels wide. Your website’s content area, however, might only be 800 pixels wide. If you upload the 4,000px image, the user’s browser must download that massive file and then shrink it to fit—a huge waste of time and data.

The Fix: Before you upload, resize your image to the exact dimensions it will be displayed at.

• Common Mistake: Resizing with HTML or CSS (e.g., width="800") does not reduce the file size. The browser still downloads the giant 4,000px image.
• What to do: Use an editor to change the actual dimensions. If your blog post area is 800px wide, resize your image to 800px wide.

Step 2: Choose the Right Modern File Format

In the past, the choice was just JPG (for photos) or PNG (for graphics). Today, the choice is much simpler.

• WebP (Best Choice): This is a modern format from Google. It produces files that are 25-35% smaller than JPGs or PNGs with the exact same visual quality. It also supports transparency, combining the best of both worlds. All modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge) fully support it.
• JPG/JPEG (Good): Still a great choice for photographs if you don’t want to use WebP. It uses “lossy” compression, which means it removes a tiny bit of data you can’t see to keep files small.
• PNG (Only for Transparency): Only use PNG if you need a transparent background and can’t use WebP. It uses “lossless” compression (no data loss), so the files are much larger.
• GIF (Avoid): Only use this for simple, animated images.

The Fix: Convert your images to WebP whenever possible.

Step 3: Compress the Final Image

Compression is the final “squeeze” that makes your image file as small as possible. This is where you can achieve massive savings.

The Fix: Use a modern compression tool.

• Easy & Free (Recommended): Use Google’s free web tool, Squoosh. You can drag your image in, resize it (Step 1), select your format like WebP (Step 2), and use the quality slider to compress it (Step 3) all in one place. You can see a live preview of the quality and the final file size before you download.
• Automated (For WordPress): If you use WordPress, you can install a plugin like Imagify, Optimole, or EWWW Image Optimizer. These plugins will automatically compress, resize, and even convert your images to WebP when you upload them.

Start Speeding Up Your Site Today

A slow website isn’t just a minor annoyance; it’s a direct path to losing customers. In a world where 47% of consumers expect a page to load in two seconds or less, every kilobyte counts.

As you’ve seen, unoptimized images are often the single biggest culprit, but they are also one of the easiest to fix. By following the 3-step process—resizing to the correct dimensions, converting to modern formats like WebP, and compressing the final file—you can dramatically improve your site’s performance, create a better user experience, and send positive signals to Google.

A Fast Site Is Just the Start.

Don't let a slow website turn away customers. At Olly Olly, we build fast, professional sites that do more than just load quickly—they're designed to turn your visitors into new business. Ready for a site that performs? Call our team today.

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