Why Delaying Image Optimization Costs You 10x More and Loses 20% of Users
Operating without image optimization increases cloud costs by 10x and causes 20% user churn. Achieve 90% cost savings and 10x faster loading with Snapkit.
Have you ever experienced the following problems?
- Have you experienced images loading slowly or appearing blurry?
- Have you encountered inefficiencies in receiving and applying images to your service?
- Have you been burdened by increasing image-related cloud costs?
These problems aren't unique to you. Teams worldwide are experiencing these issues. As a software engineer at multiple companies, I've encountered common image-related problems. Image optimization is very important for improving user experience and increasing website visibility and ranking in search engines. Let me share the reasons why image optimization is necessary and how to solve them.
Slow Image Loading That Real Users Experience
See firsthand the image loading delays that users experience daily. The impact of these problems on business is greater than you might think.
Real user experience of image loading delays
Slow Image Loading Causes User Churn#
How is your service performing?
Clear your browser cache using developer tools, and if you serve global users, set your network to 'Slow 4G' and reload. Image optimization can significantly improve loading speed, SEO, and overall website performance.
Every 1-second page loading delay can reduce purchase conversion rates by up to 20%. (Google/SOASTA Mobile Page Speed Study↗)
Images are also one of the most network-costly resources. Therefore, image loading delays significantly degrade web page performance. Reducing image file size is crucial, and smaller files improve website performance and loading speed.
Page performance is one of SEO's evaluation factors, directly impacting search rankings and revenue. Web crawlers can more efficiently crawl pages through optimized images and proper HTML structure. For SEO, it's also important to add appropriate tags like alt tags and title tags to images. Alternative text is essential for accessibility improvements such as for visually impaired users and search engine optimization, and when writing alternative text, it's recommended to describe the image content clearly and concisely.
Real business impact of performance degradation:
- Amazon: Just 0.1 second loading delay causes 1% revenue decrease (Amazon internal study)
- Google: 0.5 second page loading time increase reduces search volume by 20% (Google web performance study)
- BBC: Each additional second of loading causes 10% user churn (BBC user behavior analysis)
Converting to modern formats like WebP or AVIF uses image compression technology to reduce file size while maintaining quality, making image loading nearly 10x faster and significantly improving website page performance.
Rather than unconditionally choosing formats that reduce file size, it's better to compare and decide between various compression methods. For example, lossy compression reduces file size but may cause slight quality degradation. Using various formats like jpg, png, WebP, and AVIF appropriately is effective for web image optimization.
Particularly, applying responsive images optimized for various devices and resolutions ensures photos and images appear sharp and load quickly even in high-resolution environments like mobile. Displaying images only at the size shown to users can make loading even faster.
Image optimization methods include various strategies such as CSS sprites, lazy loading, WebP conversion, and using image CDNs. Using these methods can improve both web page performance and user experience simultaneously.
Image compression, various image file management, and using optimization tools can effectively reduce file size while maintaining website quality and performance. Additionally, using unique photos and images can enhance SEO competitiveness. It's entirely possible to reduce file size without quality degradation even when enlarging images.
You can easily apply this through Snapkit's image format conversion feature by modifying query parameters.
Image Optimization is Essential for Cloud Cost Savings#
Without image optimization, image-based services can see cloud infrastructure costs increase by up to 10x compared to optimized versions (Snapkit customer analysis data). This applies not only to design images created by teams but also to images uploaded directly by users. After upload, modifying the original image to adjust size or quality is difficult. Therefore, it's important to prepare optimized images from the beginning or consider image transformation.
Many startups are happy when their user base grows, but are shocked by the proportionally increasing cloud costs. High-quality photos uploaded directly by users generate much higher costs than expected. For startups, these costs can determine business sustainability. Image optimization saves nearly 10x infrastructure costs by reducing size by up to 90% while maintaining quality for both team-created and user-uploaded images.
It doesn't end with simple optimization. If you operate multiple platforms, you'll face another problem.
Snapkit helps you focus on solving customer problems through image optimization support. You also pay only for what you use, so you can save costs according to service scale. Check pricing here.
Image Optimization Becomes More Complex with Multiple Platforms#
Let me share a case I experienced.
- We received user feedback that product images appeared blurry on mobile devices.
- Our team operated three platforms: iOS, Android, and Web.
- The cause was that each device has different resolutions, so mobile devices needed images at least 2x larger than what users see.
- However, without image optimization, images became sharp but loading became slow.
To achieve sharp and fast image loading, we needed to meet these requirements:
- Convert to WebP, AVIF formats that reduce file size while maintaining quality
- Resize images to not be unnecessarily larger than the size shown to users
Various programs (e.g., image editing software, automation scripts, etc.) can be used to automate image optimization and conversion. However, optimizing and converting all images uploaded by users is a challenging task.
A method to easily apply many image conversions across platforms is adding conversion parameters to image URLs. Our team spent months developing an image conversion system with DevOps and Server engineers, and 3 client developers from each platform had to modify code.
Snapkit provides features to easily apply this. Adding query parameters like
image.png?dpr=3,image.png?blur=trueto image URLs for Retina display support and blur processing in real-time makes it simple. Explore more image transformations
Easy Image Transformation with URL Query Parameters
Just add query parameters to your image URL.
fox.jpgSelect Transformation Options
Images Created by Designers are in Figma. How Do We Optimize and Apply Them to Services?#
To apply images from Figma to services, you need to download them.
The process of designers creating images and developers applying them to services is more cumbersome than expected.
- Designer uploads images to Figma
- Developer downloads from Figma
- S3 upload
- Check image display at CDN address
- Write code
To solve this problem, you can create a Figma plugin to reduce this to 2 steps: optimize and upload images without leaving Figma, then developers integrate into services.
Through Snapkit's Figma plugin↗, you can reduce this to 2 steps: optimize and upload images without leaving Figma, then developers integrate into services.
In-House Image Optimization Development Takes Time Away from Core Business Focus#
In fact, most teams respond to image optimization with one of these cases:
- Don't recognize its importance or don't know how to implement it
- Recognize it but can't develop it in-house due to insufficient development resources
- Upload to free image optimization websites (with copyright concerns) and download again
As business grows and image usage increases, this leads to unnecessary infrastructure costs and user churn.
Teams consider in-house development to solve these problems, but is it a wise choice?
If development resources are insufficient or startup development teams have fast growth and survival as their highest priority, it might be more reasonable to save development costs, focus on core business, and develop in-house when the business grows and development resources become sufficient. Hundreds of development teams worldwide have the same concerns.
In-House Development Failure Case
At startup A, I tried to develop an image processing system internally, but 2 developers worked on it for 3 weeks and it still had poor completeness. We needed additional time for ongoing maintenance, but couldn't spend more time on this system while competitors kept releasing new features.
Eventually, the in-house system became difficult to maintain due to other work priorities, and we had to find expensive enterprise solutions.
There are two choices to solve this problem:
- Spend several weeks creating an incomplete solution and invest in ongoing maintenance costs.
- Or use a service that professionally provides image features in 5 minutes.
You might think: "Can't we do this later?" or "Can't our team developers handle this?"
The later you adopt, the higher the costs become over time.
- Daily increasing cloud costs: Unnecessary costs incurred for every day optimization is delayed
- Users leaving: Potential customers churn daily due to poor performance
- Development team time waste: Core feature development delayed due to business-unrelated development
- Competitive gap: Competitors are already ahead with optimized performance
Snapkit provides image optimization infrastructure immediately after signup, offers it at lower cost than actual construction infrastructure costs, and requires no maintenance effort.
Enhance Global User Experience One Step Further with Image CDN#
Even after solving the 5 problems mentioned above, there's one more consideration when expanding to global services: utilizing Image CDN (Content Delivery Network).
Image CDN distributes and stores original images across multiple servers worldwide, allowing images to be served from the nearest server regardless of where users connect. This can dramatically improve image loading speed.
Image CDN doesn't just transmit files quickly. It automatically supports various file formats and resolutions, providing images optimized for users' devices and browser environments. Additionally, Image CDN provides image compression features using various formats like JPEG, WebP, and AVIF to further reduce file size and increase image delivery speed.
For example, it can provide smaller image files to mobile devices and high-resolution images to desktops. This improves overall website performance and allows more users to view images comfortably.
Also, using Image CDN makes storing and managing original image files easier and reduces bottlenecks that can occur during file upload and distribution processes. As a result, website loading speed improves, and user satisfaction and return visit rates increase.
Snapkit provides efficient collaboration and cloud cost savings for development teams, and fast website performance for users through image optimization automation. When you focus on solving customer problems, Snapkit solves image-related issues for you.
If this story resonates with you, start with Snapkit right now.