Website Performance Issue

Hello,

I’ve run several performance reports on one of our sites (below) and have reached out to plugin support and hosting support regarding the performance.

The report (from GT Metrix) is saying there’s two main issues:
1. Avoid enormous network payloads
2. Properly size images

I spoke with the hosting company, WP Engine, and they suggested reaching out to the plugin developer directly, which I did.

This is what they got back to me with:

This is Joseph from Imagify, and I’ll gladly assist you here!

I ran a Pagespeed test of my own to see the specific results you’re getting, and I can see the following 2 sections being flagged that are the sections related to Imagify (these sections are related to image optimization and serving images as WebP format on your pages). However, I don’t think the issue with the images specifically flagged is related to Imagify because they are all external images (see highlighting of a couple examples below):

5ce40e3163193a0362a81b60db6f588a.png
1a5414952590b0f4b0e070718cb63469.png

If we look at a list of all the images on your page, we can see that all the local ones (the ones on your website’s server) are in WebP format (meaning they have been optimized and are displaying on your page properly):

cafc613775134543c742be9bcc3332a2.png

Basically what this all means is that you have some images on your page(s) that seem to be from Instagram and Facebook. Since those images are being served from external servers, there’s nothing that can be done about them, unfortunately.

Regarding these 2 items that you mentioned:

1. Avoid enormous network payloads
2. Properly size images

The first one is a bit more of a general category, and part of it does relate to the “Efficiently Encode Images” and “Serve images in next-gen format” categories that are related to Imagify, but since as I mentioned there’s not much further we can do about the remaining external images, I don’t think there is anything further from Imagify’s perspective that I can suggest.

The “Properly Size Images” warnings are actually not related to Imagify. Imagify doesn’t technically serve images, as that is the job of your theme. When you upload an image, your theme creates all the different thumbnail sizes of that image and (when working properly) serves the appropriate size based on where the image is used on your site, and the size of the visitor’s screen.

The reason that you’re getting these warnings is that your theme is serving images that are larger in size than the size at which they are actually displayed on your site. So for example, if an image is actually 1000 pixels wide, but your theme uses HTML or CSS to resize it down to 500 pixels wide when it is displayed, these warnings are saying your theme should actually just be creating a 500 pixel wide thumbnail version of the image to use.

Imagify optimizes all your thumbnail image sizes to reduce file size. However, even an optimized image will still get flagged if its dimensions are larger than necessary for the context in which it is used. Although this is one of those external images, so Imagify is not able to optimize it either.

With that said, I would also mention that themes must be designed to look well on many different screen sizes, from small mobile phones up to large computer displays, so it’s possible your theme developer has done things this way intentionally.

Often, themes set image widths and heights based on a percentage of how wide the visitor’s screen is so the display looks good no matter the screen size. The downside of doing this, is that it causes the displayed dimensions of images (again based on percentages) to be somewhat smaller than the actual dimensions of the images, which leads to the speed tests flagging them, as is the case here.

The best course of action is likely to ask your theme developer about this, and to see whether they have any solutions or suggestions on how things could be improved. However, this is a tradeoff between design and function, so it is possible that you might want to leave things as they are for the sake of your site’s design and layout.

Any help would be appreciated