Ask us why a small business website loads slowly and we will bet on images before we even look. A single uncompressed photo from a phone can weigh more than the rest of the page combined. Here is how to fix it — most of it in one afternoon.
1. Resize before you upload
A hero image displayed at 1200 pixels wide should be saved at roughly 1200 pixels wide — not 4000. Export at the size you actually need. This alone can cut page weight by 90%.
2. Compress everything
Modern compression is visually lossless: visitors cannot tell the difference between a 2MB photo and its 150KB compressed twin. Use Squoosh, TinyPNG or a WordPress plugin such as ShortPixel (see our best SEO plugins guide).
3. Use modern formats
WebP and AVIF deliver the same quality as JPEG at a fraction of the size, and every current browser supports them. Keep JPEG only as a fallback for older email contexts.
4. Write useful alt text
Alt text describes an image to screen readers and to Google. Write it like a caption: “Red-brick Victorian terrace renovated by our Coulsdon team”, not “IMG_4021.jpg” and not a string of keywords. Honest, descriptive, done.
5. Lazy-load below the fold
Images below the fold should load only when the visitor scrolls to them. Native lazy
loading (loading="lazy") is a one-attribute change with an outsized effect
on initial load time. Your hero image is the exception: load it eagerly so the page
feels instant.
6. Name files sensibly
seo-friendly-website-design.jpg beats DSC_0084.jpg. File names
are a minor signal, but they cost nothing and add up across a whole site.
Image optimisation is the highest-leverage speed fix on most websites: one afternoon, permanently faster pages, happier visitors, better rankings.
Every site in our SEO friendly website design builds ships with resized, compressed, lazy-loaded images as standard. Ask for a quote.
