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How to speed up your website with image compression

Performance · 2025-04-08 · 7 min read

If your site feels slow, images are almost certainly the cause — they're typically 50%+ of page weight. Here's a concrete plan that takes an afternoon and delivers the biggest speed gain per hour of effort.

Step 1: Audit your heaviest images

Open DevTools → Network → filter by Img, reload, and sort by size. The biggest offenders are usually the hero image and product/gallery photos.

Step 2: Convert to WebP at 82%

WebP cuts 25-35% versus JPG. Run your images through JPG to WebP or the compressor at 82% quality.

Step 3: Right-size everything

Cap images to the largest size they actually display — usually 1920px wide for full-bleed, much less for thumbnails. Use the resizer. This alone often halves file size.

Step 4: Bulk-process the whole library

For an existing site, drop your entire /images folder into bulk compress and download one ZIP. Replace the originals.

Step 5: Lazy-load and set dimensions

Add loading="lazy" to below-the-fold images and always set width/height to prevent layout shift.

What to expect

In our testing, converting a typical gallery to right-sized WebP improved mobile Lighthouse performance by 18-32 points. See the deeper dive: why file compression improves website speed.

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