I still think Google PageSpeed sucks, but it is a game we all have to play if we want to show up with a good ranking on Google. One of the biggest culprits is gigantic image sizes.
Images that are too large will slow down your site faster than the emergency brake on a car. The largest file sizes take forever to load, especially on mobile devices. Beyond Google punishing your website for slow load times, your users will experience a slower website.
What is the solution? Image compression. Compressing your images for use on the web will decrease your file sizes and load times, helping your user’s experience.
We recently optimized a library where we saved 72% on image file sizes. Their library went from almost 4GB of assets to 1.2GB! That is a massive amount of bandwidth and storage savings and will result in a higher ranking from Google.
There are a few choices for image compression, and we have tried several of them: Imagify, TinyPNG, and Smush, to name a few. But for us, the winner in 2021 is…
Imagify
After testing image quality vs. file sizes, Imagify was the clear winner. It creates highly compressed images with very little visible loss of quality. Furthermore, you can select the level of compression and compress images on upload directly in WordPress. You can even squeeze images in other directories in your WP install if you have assets that live outside of the media library.
Every image on this website is compressed with Imagify!
Best of all, it is compatible with WP Rocket, the best-in-class WordPress Optimization tool. With Imagify and WP Rocket together, you can serve images in the newer WebP format, further speeding up your website.
Imagify has a free tier that will be plenty for regular use besides perhaps the initial build. In addition, their unlimited plan is only $8.33/mo when you subscribe for a year.
If you struggle with site speed and media sizes, check out Imagify, test their compression quality, and speed up your site with ease!
Which image compression tool for WordPress is your favorite?
