Is your web page speed a pitfall or a profit driver? If you don’t stay on top of optimizing rich media on your website, chances are your web performance is actively (and financially) working against you.
Complex Networks has been using Cloudinary since 2014 to manage and optimize images across seven websites and two mobile apps, making editorial workflow more efficient, improving page performance and load time, and increasing user engagement. Cloudinary was instrumental in enabling Complex Networks to redesign its web properties. Without the flexibility that Cloudinary offers to both creative and development teams, it would not have been possible for Complex Networks to achieve such a fast time to market.
If you're like most consumers today, you engage more with pictures or videos on a website than text. The stats don't lie - four times as many visitors would rather watch a video about a product than read about it, and sites with compelling images average twice as many views as text-heavy ones.
Since the Internet boom over a decade ago, the number of new startups established globally has grown consistently. Every year an estimated 1.35 million new tech startups are formed by enthusiastic entrepreneurs, who follow their dreams to build a sustainable and successful business.
Because images dominate page weight, methodical image optimization can have a significant effect on conversions and user experience. And the performance tools you choose to use can have a powerful impact on how websites are built and maintained. One such popular open source tool is WebPagetest. It is designed to measure and analyze webpage performance, which is why Cloudinary chose to partner with our friends over there to launch Website Speed Test.
Who doesn't love some striking imagery to drive your point home? Whether you're selling a product or service, trying to communicate complex ideas, or simply captivate the emotions of your users, pictures can do that. Everyone knows they work, and everyone loves them.
Most developers are familiar with ImageMagick, a very capable open source software suite that they can use to manage and manipulate images.
The functionality of ImageMagick is typically utilized from the command-line, but wrappers have been written for a wide selection of programming languages, making ImageMagick a very popular choice among developers.
Patience is not a virtue for website visitors and online shoppers. Every fraction of a second counts when it comes to keeping – or losing – a visitor to your website.
Loading time is a major contributing factor to page abandonment, according to an infographic on the Kissmetrics blog using statistics from Akamai and Gomez. Because the average web visitor has no patience for a page that takes too long to load, abandonment increases as a percentage with every second of load time. Nearly 40 percent of users will abandon a page after 3 seconds, the blog noted. Mobile Internet users probably experience the most frustration with this issue – 73 percent noted that they’ve encountered a website that was too slow to load.
This is a guest post by Kasia Kramnik, Content Marketing Manager at Netguru, a full stack development house and one of Cloudinary's Consulting partners.
Take a look at your website. Are you happy with the way it looks? I bet you are, and that’s really awesome. Keep in mind though, there is one thing you can’t actually see, but you need to experience: the load speed. Sometimes the most important element is invisible to the eye. In this article you’ll find tips on perfecting the invisible as well: loading your site and media with visibly better results.
