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Boost site speed and SEO for event websites
An event website isn’t just about words telling visitors where to go and what to expect. It should be packed with images too.
From speaker photos to event galleries and sponsor logos, these visuals are essential to sell your event to attendees.
But these images can also slow down your website’s load time.
Why does site speed matter for event websites?
Site speed is a key SEO factor considered by Google and other search engines.
If your site doesn’t load quickly, visitors are likely to leave before it even finishes loading.
Thankfully, these are relatively easy fixes. Let’s address them both.
Feed the algorithm
It’s not just actual human visitors to consider when it comes to your event website.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) involves several key factors that determine your event website’s ranking in search results. Among them, load time is critical – yet often overlooked.
The faster your website loads, the better. Not just for visitors but for Google’s ranking algorithms as well.
Wait, come back!
The longer your site takes to load, the more likely it is that visitors will move away before they see any of your event information.
Studies show you typically have around three seconds before visitors lose patience with slow load times. While some may tolerate up to 10 seconds, why risk losing anyone?
As we know in events, attracting and retaining visitors is everything – whether before or during the event. Don’t lose them before you’ve even started!
Reducing your image sizes and creating a fast-loading website should be a key priority of your event strategy.
How to optimise images and improve load times
So we’ve established you should be compressing your images. But how can you do this?
This process is called image optimisation. To carry this out effectively, focus on these two areas:
1. Reduce the pixel size
If a photographer or speaker provides an image with a larger pixel size than needed, it’s essential to resize it before you use it online.
Resize and then upload your image at the largest pixel size it will ever need on your event website.
You can use a tool like Adobe Express free image resizer to get your images into shape.
Resizing your image will not only reduce its pixel size but also its file size.
A great start! But we can make the file size even smaller using another online tool...
2. Use an image compression tool
By using an image compression tool like TinyPNG, you can shrink the file size even further.
For example, the image at the top of this blog was originally 1MB in size at 1920x1080 pixels.
Using TinyPNG, I reduced this to 148KB.
Same pixel size. Same visual quality. But its file size is 85% smaller.
Studies show you typically have around three seconds before visitors lose patience with slow load times.
Optimal results
Imagine the impact of reduced image sizes across your entire event website:
Improved load times
Better user experience
More visitors
Less bandwidth consumption.
All this, plus a boost to your SEO.
Best image formats for event websites
Another factor to consider is the image file format.
While newer formats like WebP and SVG exist, let’s focus on the two main traditional formats, JPG and PNG, and how to use those.
For logos and text-heavy images, use PNG.
For photos of people and venues, JPG is best.
If you ever need an image to have a transparent background, it has to be a PNG (JPGs can’t support transparency).
The not-so-big-anymore picture
It’s not just this year’s content you could optimise. If you have an archive of previous years’ events, you could reduce the size of images on there too and make your event site even more SEO- and site-speed-friendly.
Now that you know how image optimisation can boost your website’s load time, why not start today?
