Most of the customers come to the website through Search Engines. Through blended search results certain keywords show images in search results page. Due to this reason it is important for websites to be optimized for images as well. This is especially important for shopping websites as the images of the products being sold gets maximum coverage through search engines.
Naming of Images
The first step in optimizing image is through naming of images. Using a more descriptive name for the image helps search engines to find relevant content of the website. Search engines crawl the name of the image and if the content of the website is related to the name of the image it will be displayed in search results. Shopping websites can give the specification of the product along with name for the image associated with the product.
Alt Tags for Images
ALT Tags were introduced for text based browsers long ago. If the browser is unable to render the images due to low bandwidth or other settings web pages display the alt tags in place of the images. As the name suggests ALT tags are alternative methods of showing images on web page. It is good to give keywords in Alt tags but overdoing so by giving alt tags to decorative elements will make the web page look spammy.
Image Dimensions and Product AnglesMost of the websites showcasing products shows multiple photos of the same product. In such cases it is good to have the image description containing the different views and angles. It is also good to describe the thumbnail and original image by using small image and larger image in image name and description.
File Size of the Image
As the browsing of the website mostly on mobile devices it is essential to take care of the image file size. larger images will take much more time to load and this will be critical for slow speed connecting devices. Pagespeed factors also describe using images having filesize optimized for loading on mobile websites.
Type of Image
It is essential for the web designer to know which type of image will be good for the web page. Using JPEG GIF and PNG images based on the requirement is critical for the website. If animated images are needed gif images will be good and for transparent images png will be good. JPEG is widely used in most websites. latest image standards are also introduced by Google for WebP images on web page.
