How to optimize images for a faster website

Images make a site engaging — and, if unoptimized, painfully slow. Heavy images are the single most common reason small-business sites load slowly. The fixes are straightforward.

The essentials

• •Right-size images to how they're actually displayed (don't serve a 4000px photo into a 400px slot).
• •Use modern formats like WebP or AVIF.
• •Compress them — you can cut file size dramatically with little visible loss.
• •Lazy-load below-the-fold images so they load only when needed.

Let the build handle it

A well-built site handles most of this automatically — resizing, modern formats, and lazy loading built in — so your images look great and load fast without manual work every time.