Why Website Photo Sizes Matter
The sizes of your website images matter. A lot.
There are 3 top reasons that the photos on your website images matter most. We’re not going to get hyper-technical here. This is simply the basics of what you need to know for the images you use for your online presence.
But first, one definition you should be familiar with. You’ve heard of inches, yards, & miles but this may be one you haven’t heard of before – pixels.
Pixel (px) – A unit of measurement for digital images.
All measurements in this blog post refer to pixels, which is the standard in web design.
Site Speed
There can be many contributing factors to a slow website, but images are the biggest offender. When you use excessively large images on your website, the pages don’t load quickly. And a website that doesn’t load quickly will lose potential customers. To keep it simple, full-width images should be sized to 2,048px, and decrease from there depending on your website design.
In a nutshell – If you have photos for your website that are 5,000px wide, they’re too big and will bloat your website. Resize those images to 2,048px or less.
Consistency
When a website design calls for multiple images on the same page, consistency is crucial to the credibility of your website. (Nothing says DIY faster than inconsistent images)
Let’s go over a couple of examples…You have a service-based business and one of the pages on your website is for your team. Great! Potential customers love to see who they can work with. But the team photos are all different sizes so they lack consistency and professionalism. Now the potential customer starts feeling a lack of trust in your competency, even if they don’t consciously know it.
Or perhaps you offer a few different services that you have described in your Work With Me page. Again, potential customers want to see this information. But the issue of perceived professionalism comes into play again when your images are inconsistent. This design element may seem like a tale of over-caution, but believe it or not, a simple lack of consistent image sizes can cost you the sale.
Be sure to use consistent photo sizes, especially for photos on the same page and ALWAYS for product photos.
Image Quality
It’s important to remember that you can always make an image smaller, but you can’t make an image bigger without losing quality. We often receive tiny images from website clients and we have to give them the bad news that their images won’t work for the new website.
When you use tiny images on your website and you force them to show up in a larger space, the images can be blurry. That’s not good for your website or for the people visiting your website to determine your credibility.
If your business photos are small photos that have been passed around and cropped or sized for different uses over the years, consider a new photoshoot for your business. High-quality business photos are a fantastic investment.
