Technical preparation.
THE TWO STEPS
Resize, then compress.
WHAT SIZE
Around 1,000 to 1,500 pixels on the longest side suits most shops, including zoom.
Larger is wasted and slows every page.
COMPRESSION
Around 80 per cent quality is usually indistinguishable and substantially smaller.
FORMAT
JPEG or WebP for photographs.
Never PNG for photographs; it produces enormous files.
CONSISTENCY
The same dimensions for every product image.
Inconsistent sizes make category pages look ragged.
FOR BULK PREPARATION
Free tools process a folder at once.
Worth setting up before adding a large catalogue.
AUTOMATING IT
A plugin that compresses on upload prevents the problem recurring.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Product images are the largest part of a shop's page weight.
A category page with twenty unoptimised images is unusable on mobile data.
