2023 Guide: Importance Of Using WebP On Your Website

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The COVID pandemic made millions of traditional merchants realize the importance of having a digital existence in the 21st century.

In business, the customer is king, and in online marketing, content is king. Since content is king, many online firms are using effective content with supportive images and graphics as their preferred online strategy.

 

Why are images important on the website?

According to human psychology, humans find it easier to understand an image than text. And the image is so easy to understand; it requires no higher knowledge. Images are understandable by an illiterate person and even a child. People find it easy to understand and share the image with others. In ancient times, when our ancestors discovered no language. The people of ancient civilizations used to communicate with the

Graphic-based content is not only easier for people to remember, but it is also more likely to be shared. The first written language used by humans was developed by ancient people and preserved on cave walls as paintings. Throughout those ancient years, images have been the main form of communication.

The human brain is designed to absorb and understand visuals in a better way than textual content. An appropriately used design in the website, along with the content, can highlight every tiny detail and

Visuals are easier for the human brain to comprehend than words. An effective image strategy highlights design and aesthetics, which raises brand engagement. We can observe that the internet is currently swamped with images and graphics due to these causes.

 

Side Effects of Having Large Image File Sizes

With so much content available online nowadays, businesses are competing with each other for customers’ attention by cutting through the noise. As a result, the use of high-quality photographs has become crucial to online strategy, resulting in increasingly image-heavy current websites.

Nevertheless, employing a lot of images on the website might lead to the website performing slowly, which is one of the issues.

The file sizes of these images are different, especially those with many colors. Hence, these images are prone to consume your server’s huge amount of resources if the admin fails to optimize them from time to time. Furthermore, optimization failure can damage the website and cause multiple website issues, like slow page-loading speed and website crashing, as the server cannot bear the strain efficiently. All these factors deteriorate the website’s performance and can affect the customer’s shopping experience. An unsatisfactory customer shopping experience equals low SEO rankings, conversion rates, and store traffic; everything is low in short.

To avoid the earlier-mentioned scenarios, merchants can adopt different image formats that perfectly balance size and quality. Only 2 common image formats, JPEG and PNG, were used when the digital era was in its initial stage. JPEG was invented in 1992, and the PNG image format was invented in 1996. Until now, only these two formats were being used, but lately, a new image format called WebP crashed the popularity of traditional image formats and has gained a huge fan base since its invention.

So, in this, we will enlighten you on the importance of using WebP images for your website.

 

How to Convert Normal Images to WebP Images?

If you want to create a WebP image or convert an existing JPEG or PNG image, you must have CMS in which WebP is supported. Fortunately, many tools in the market and graphic software enable admins to create and convert images to WebP images.

Admins can use graphic tools like Adobe Photoshop, Google Photos, and many others. Along with that, admins are also facilitated with an amazing Magento 2 WebP Image Converter Plugin that can convert JPEG and PNG images to WebP images.

Besides this, even Google has some interesting software that can create WebP images and convert WebP images. Google provides tools like WebP precompiled conversion tool, which the admin must install on the computer device and use whenever an image needs to be converted to a WebP image. In addition to this, Google also provides a tool named libwebp API which the admins can use to decode or encode WebP files.

 

Benefits of Using WebP Images on Your Website

 

1.  Increased website’s Page Loading Speed

Having attractive images and unique graphics is not enough to impress a customer. The website must have a speedy loading page. If the website’s page load speed is not that fast, the customer will leave the website immediately, and it will create a bad impression of your brand.

Various studies have concluded that the usage of WebP images on the website has sped up the website’s page loading speed from 5 seconds to just a fraction of a second, which ultimately increased the store’s traffic, conversion rates, revenue, brand impression, and customer loyalty.

 

2.  Increased SEO Rankings

In 2021, Google released an update regarding its algorithm, that the website’s page-loading speed will also be considered a ranking factor. Hence, you may benefit your search engine optimization (SEO) by making your website’s page loading faster.

Along with this update, Google also included several page speed metrics as part of the page experience, which will affect rankings. Your ranking will also be impacted by user activity on your website, particularly bounce rate.

 

3.  Save Up Your Server Storage

Saving storage space is made possible by smaller files. Your cost per unit of space will decrease as the compression on your image files gets reduced.

There is a limited amount of disc space available on a server for your website, and storage costs can increase depending on your website hosting. Not just media must be accommodated in your server, though. To maintain the functionality of your website, you might use JavaScript, CSS, and database themes.

 

Conclusion

One technique to improve the functionality of your website is image optimization. Low image sizes can accelerate your website’s performance via lazy loading graphics, better font loading, and preloading links.

Be a dynamic website that functions effectively on mobile devices and platforms. Make sure your images are optimized for mobile viewing, considering the likelihood of mobile browsers using slower connections. Select dependable, and speedy hosting. One technique to improve your website is image optimization.

You can expand your knowledge of website building and boost sales with Magento 2 extensions with additional technologies, including WebP. It all comes down to designing a great user experience while building for the web. To do this, optimize your site, so users never have to think about loading it.

 

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