Rank position and optimizing images for load speed

Google has recently announced that they are now including site speed as a factor for rank position. Ouch! This makes sense, but it is interesting that as a web developer (and one who was still making entire websites in Flash until about 2 years ago), I had slowly stopped considering this issue as the years have gone by. I remember when a 100Kb image meant waiting for a couple of minutes and so was only used when really necessary. But with average broadband internet speed increasing steadily, even  more than a MB could load at a *decent* rate (I'm writing from Spain, so if you live somewhere else your experience may vary).



What does this mean for web developers? I guess we will have to take into account the fact that every pixel counts. But instead of avoiding large full screen backgrounds it might be wise to read up on how to optimize these images and which image types are more appropriate in each case.

Here are some articles to get started:
PNG vs JPG: 6 simple lessons you can learn from our mistakes by Turnkey Linux
Optimization of JPEG (JPG) images: good quality and small size by AMPSoft
Speed Up Your Website with Better Image Optimization in Photoshop by UXBooth
Speed Up Web Site Load Time by WebWeaver
1 Minute Image Optimization to Make Website Load Fast by Techpavan

Search Post

Label :