In an online shop, photos are what sells and also what weighs most. A product page with oversized images opens slowly, and the customer who waits leaves. The rule is simple: upload the image already at the size it will be seen, in the right format and with a name that says what it is.
Before you upload
| 1 |
Resize. A photo straight from the camera or the phone has far more pixels than the screen shows. Check in the theme settings the size at which product images appear, and prepare them a little above it.
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Pick the format. JPEG for photos, PNG only when you need a transparent background, WebP when the theme and browsers accept it. See image optimisation and WebP.
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Compress. A compression tool, before uploading or through a plugin, takes weight off without it showing to the eye.
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Name the file. brown-leather-sandal.jpg tells Google more than IMG_4821.jpg. Lower-case letters, no accents, with hyphens.
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Keep the same proportion across products, a square for example. A shop with images of different shapes jumps about on the page and looks careless.
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After you upload
| What |
Why |
| Alt text on every image |
It describes the image to those who cannot see it (screen readers, slow connections) and helps search engines understand it. Write what is visible, without stuffing words. |
| The main image first |
It is the one in the listing and in shares, and the first to load. Give it more care than the others. |
| Deferred loading of the rest |
WordPress already defers, by default, the images lower down the page. Check that no plugin undoes it. |
| Regenerate sizes if you change theme |
WordPress makes several sizes of each image. If you change theme, the old sizes no longer fit: a regeneration plugin creates the new ones. |
As for the product gallery, a few well-chosen photos (front, side, in use, one close-up) sell more than twenty near-identical ones. Every extra photo is one more file to load, and one more to keep on the account.
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Every uploaded image becomes several. WordPress keeps the original and creates copies in various sizes. A shop with thousands of products generates tens of thousands of files, and accounts have a file-count limit (inodes) besides the space limit. See inodes, processes and memory and delete the images you no longer use.
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Has the shop slowed down after uploading many images, or is space running out? Tell us the address and we will see what is using it.
Open a support ticket
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