# The Importance of Image Resizing: Enhancing Web and Social Media Efficiency Enhance online performance with image resizing! Explore benefits, resize for top platforms, and use our free Image Resizer for better website and social media impact. **Claire Oswald** product marketing manager **November 17, 2023** Everyone loves pulling up a website that renders with a bright green background, purple text in Comic Sans, a dancing waving logo, and a couple of pixelated images that load line by line. Psych! No one likes that, and it comes down to the basic reason that we prefer well-performing websites and social media posts. The question becomes, how do you optimize your channels so that the majority of people who stumble across them – or intentionally come to find them – react with approval and pleasure? There are, of course, a million answers to this question, but at the very top of the list are great images. ### Why do images matter so much? > “When deciding whether to make a potential purchase, 75% of online shoppers rely on product photos,” [says LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-product-photography-can-affect-your-ecommerce-5-important-onyeka/). They add, “across social channels, photo and imagery posts are the most-used content type to increase audience engagement.” Not only do your photos bring people in initially, their [quality and genuineness have long-term implications for your brand](/content/blog/the-ultimate-product-photography-guide-in-2024/index.html). According to the same LinkedIn source, 22% of returns happen because the product doesn’t look the same in person as it did online. So let’s get it right … right? Right. In this article, we will talk about resizing images for websites and social media. We will also cover the requirements for different platforms and other factors to consider for image optimization. Lastly, we will explore methods for managing a large collection of product images. ## Benefits of Correct Image Sizing An image is an image, is it not? Unfortunately, no. An image in the correct size is an image. An image in the _wrong_ size is a mess. This can go wrong in a number of ways. ### Incorrectly Sized Photos Gone Wrong For instance, images that are too large for their container must be shrunk down by the system to which they’re uploaded, whether we’re talking about Etsy, Amazon, or Facebook. When an image is just too large (say, 6,000 pixels across for a 1,500-pixel container), the change in size will lead to a serious degradation in resolution. Often, as the software tries to keep the image while massively reducing pixels, the picture loses definition and becomes super blurry. The opposite problem can also occur: sometimes an image is too small for its container. For example, you might need to fill a 2,000-pixel container, but your image is only 800 pixels wide. When that happens, the image gets stretched too large. The system is forced to work only with the graphic information it has, so instead of making a bigger picture at equal resolution, it blows it up and fills in the missing pixels with the same colors as those around it. This leads to a chunky effect that fools no one – and customers hate it. When they see pixelated product photos, they’ll almost certainly leave in search of better photography. ### Benefits of Correct Sizing That’s where image resizing comes in. Changing the size of a picture to suit its exact purpose can help address the above issues, leading to images that are: - Always sharp and defined at any size, neither pixelated or blurry - The right dimensions for the container, so there’s no loss of important details at the margins - Compressed enough to send quickly over the web, but not so small that they lose their resolution - Ideal for website performance, leading to quicker load time and clearer resolution This in turn enhances the user experience, makes people want to hang around and scroll through your photos longer, and increases conversions. ## What Is Image Resizing? So what exactly does it mean to resize an image? This depends, first and foremost, on what kind of image it is. ### Image Types Vector images are easy to resize. These are created in a graphic design program (think Illustrator, Photoshop, GIMP, or Procreate) and include only strokes and lines created in the program using a series of connected points, known as vectors. These are geometrically based and can be increased endlessly without loss of resolution, provided the graphic design file doesn’t include any photos. Photographs, on the other hand, are considered raster objects. That means instead of points they’re based on pixels, which are little squares of color. When you zoom out on a high-resolution image, there are so many pixels per inch that your eye can’t determine the individual squares. But when you zoom in, they appear, making the image “pixelated.” The trouble with image resizing, therefore, arises with raster images. These cannot be scaled up without eventually pixelating, and they can’t be scaled down without an eventual critical loss of resolution. You need better approaches to image resizing if you want the photos to look good afterward. ### Types of Image Resizing There are three basic ways you can adjust a photo – or a graphic that has already been exported and has to be resized outside its program of creation. These include: - _Scaling down_: Making an image smaller is the easiest way to change the size of an image. When you use a photo editing program to do this, the program will scale down the image in such a way that all the main elements are preserved, leading to a crisp image even at a third the size. - _Upsizing_: Inflating an image can easily lead to pixelation if you don’t use the right software. That’s why you need a media editor that can upsize a photo correctly, identifying the main shapes and colors, then rebuilding the image at a larger size with the same refined resolution as the smaller one. - _Cropping_: This is technically a way to resize an image, since you’re removing part of it. Once you finish cropping, you can either leave it, or scale it up or down. Now that we’ve discussed why it matters that your images are the correct size, and taken a brief look at how to do so, let us return to the main point of this article: website and social media performance. ### How to Resize an Image Online We know how important it is to be able to make your content go further. So, we created our own Image Resizer tool to help you optimize and improve the performance of your content. ## Image Resizing and Performance Improvement Now that you have access to our Image Resizer, let’s talk about why it’s important to optimize your images for website and social media performance. ### Website Performance Large images can slow down website performance and lead to reduced conversions on an ecommerce site. According to a [roundup of research](https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/performance/more/website-performance-conversion-rates/), “Walmart found that for every 1 second improvement in page load time, conversions increased by 2%” and “Mobify found that each 100ms improvement in their homepage's load time resulted in a 1.11% increase in conversion.” Moreover, adds the above source, “47% of customers expect a webpage to load in 2 seconds or less.” As such, you must make sure every image on your site – from ecommerce photos to [hero images](/content/blog/hero-shot-photography/index.html) – is as large as it needs to be, and no larger. ### Social Media Performance The same is true for social media. A photo that’s too small or large for the platform will render weirdly both in the post and on the feed, while a correctly sized one will be sharp at every level: the individual post, on the feed, on desktop, and on mobile. “Nearly half (47%) of US consumers have made a purchase through social media, while 6 in 10 (58%) are interested in doing so,” [reports Mintel](https://www.mintel.com/press-centre/nearly-half-of-us-consumers-say-they-have-made-a-purchase-through-social-media/). As you can see, there’s a lot on the line. Which means knowing the ins and outs of image resizing is critical for your business. ## What’s in a Size? Correct Specs for Every Channel Below, you’ll find in-depth image size and dimension guidelines for the biggest ecommerce and social media platforms. Each guide includes various sizing requirements for ads, different types of posts, and more. Make sure to bookmark them for future use! - [Amazon](/content/image-resizer/amazon-image-size-specs/index.html) - [Etsy](/content/image-resizer/etsy-image-size-specs/index.html) - [LinkedIn](/content/image-resizer/linkedin-image-size-specs/index.html) - [Meta (Instagram and Facebook)](/content/image-resizer/meta-image-size-specs/index.html) - [Pinterest](/content/image-resizer/pinterest-image-size-specs/index.html) - [Shopify](/content/image-resizer/shopify-image-size-specs/index.html) - [TikTok](/content/image-resizer/tiktok-image-size-specs/index.html) - [X (Formerly Twitter)](/content/image-resizer/twitter-spec-guide/index.html) ## How to Optimize Photos Visually Beyond image resizing, there are a number of ways to optimize your photos that will increase the efficacy of your online footprint. Here are a few of our favorite tips: - _Build a shot list_ - _Get rid of shadows_ - _Use the right backgrounds_ - _Finetune color_ ## Other Considerations for Image Optimization To create a ready-to-go image, make sure you: 1. _Choose the right file type_ 2. _Create nice thumbnails_ 3. _Name files with keywords_ 4. _Rethink unnecessary images_ 5. _Test images_ Of course, there are any number of ways to improve an image’s performance online beyond image resizing. ## Keep All Your Images in One Place Many organizations, when they learn how important image resizing is, make a conscientious effort to transform their process and ensure that future photos and graphics are correctly tailored to the platform and purpose for which they’re meant. What’s the answer? A smart product information management (PIM) system. Also known as a digital asset manager (DAM), PIMs are meant to collate all your imagery and other digital assets in one place, so you always have a go-to place to upload, download, and edit your media. At soona, we’re here to help. [Product Catalog is the PIM you’ve been searching for](/content/product-catalog/index.html)!