We wanted to spend the time putting together these tips to help you understand how you can provide better images and visuals online and to show what a difference the higher quality images can make. We’re addressing three big problems you might face with the visuals you’re uploading and how you can make things right:
Decrease the file size of images
One of the easiest fixes for an image that is too big to upload is to “Save for Web & Devices” in Photoshop. You don’t want to simply save the image as a smaller size, because that will ruin the quality. “Save for Web & Devices” allows an image to be compressed without altering the dimensions or the quality, but also enables it to load faster on websites and in social feeds. Also, to improve the color integrity of the images you are posting online, choose a .png file type, or at least .jpeg. This will save you from uploading an image that turns out to be darker or lighter than you intended.
Pay attention to the load times on your website
When our new KiteMedia.co website when live last summer, I sent our new URL to some of my cool friends to check out. Just kidding; I sent it to my mom. But when she tried to visit the site on her phone, it kept crashing her browser. I tried on my end and realized the same thing. Turns out the images we were using on our homepage were too high-quality and too high-resolution, and they were causing the site to crash on mobile devices because it couldn’t handle the complexity and size of those image files.
You don’t want to lose potential clients due to large image files, so there are a couple of things you can do:
- Replace the image with just a colored background and use the same image, but smaller, and placed with the text.
- Use the “Save for Web & Devices” tool in Photoshop.
- Try a different file type, i.e. a PNG file instead of a PDF, for images that will only be viewed online and never printed.
Research the most popular or most viewed formats for each social platform
This is an interesting discovery that I am continually re-evaluating: different image dimensions perform better on each social site. An obvious example includes vertical images on Pinterest. If you think about it, a horizontal pin will take up much less room on a user’s Pinterest feed than a vertical image. Also, did you know that Facebook pages experience more engagement when they post images that are around 1,200 pixels wide by 628 pixels tall (or some similar variation)? Posts also get more engagement when they contain fewer number of characters. So from this research, would it make sense for your business to post your sale in a graphic format as an image, instead of laying out all the details in text? You can learn a lot about your customers and how to better reach them by discovering what image format and dimensions you should use in your social media strategy.
What questions do you have about posting images online? Contact us here or pose the question on social media to start the conversation and get some insight!
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