Shopify Image Optimisation Made Simple: How to Keep Your Store Fast and Beautiful

Big, beautiful product photos help your customers fall in love with what you sell. But here’s the catch. if your images are too large, they can slow your Shopify store down, and that means fewer sales.

Think of your website like a suitcase. The more you pack into it, the heavier it gets and the longer it takes to move. The same goes for your online shop; large image files take longer to load, which can frustrate visitors and push them to leave before your page even appears.

The good news? You can keep your store looking sharp and make it load faster by using the right image formats and compression settings. Let’s break it down in simple terms.

1. Why Image Size Matters for Your Shopify Store

When someone visits your website, their browser has to download all your images before showing the page.
If your pictures are huge (like several megabytes each), it’s like asking them to download a movie every time they click a product.

Fast websites are proven to:

• Keep visitors for longer

• Rank higher on Google

• Convert more shoppers into paying customers

Even a one-second delay can drop your sales by up to 20%. That’s why optimising your images is so important.

2. Choosing the Right Image Type

Not all image files are created equal some load quickly, while others slow your store down. For most Shopify stores, WebP is the best choice because it keeps your product photos sharp while using much less space. JPEG (or JPG) is another good option, especially for lifestyle images, since it looks great and works on all browsers, though it’s slightly larger in size. When you need transparency, for example, with logos or icons, use PNG, but sparingly, as these files can be quite heavy. AVIF is a newer format that makes high-quality photos very small, though it’s not yet supported everywhere. Finally, GIFs are fun for simple animations, but they can slow things down, so Shopify now automatically converts them into faster, modern versions.

3. Making Images Smaller (Without Losing Quality)

You don’t need fancy software or design skills to make images smaller. The process is called compression, it simply means removing tiny bits of data your eyes can’t see, to make the file lighter and faster to load.

Here’s what to do before uploading to Shopify:

1. Resize large photos your product pictures don’t need to be bigger than 2048×2048 pixels.

2. Use a free compression tool like:

   • TinyPNG

   • Squoosh

   • ImageOptim

3. These tools can make images 60–80% smaller without changing how they look.

After compression, a picture that was 4 MB might shrink to just 400 KB — that’s ten times faster to load.

4. How Shopify Helps You Automatically

Shopify already helps behind the scenes:

• It resizes and compresses your images when you upload them.

• It shows smaller images on phones and larger ones on computers.

• It delivers images from servers all over the world (a “CDN”), so your store loads quickly anywhere.

That means even if you forget a few steps, Shopify still works to keep your pages fast.

5. Extra Tips for Even Better Performance

A few simple habits can keep your site snappy and professional:

• Use lazy loading: This means images only load when a shopper scrolls down to them.

• Write alt text: A short description (like “blue organic cotton jumper”) helps with SEO and accessibility.

• Avoid oversized banners: Keep homepage images under 1 MB.

• Test your site speed: Use PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to see how fast your shop loads.

Faster pages mean happier visitors — and happier visitors mean more sales.

6. Summary: Keep It Simple, Keep It Fast

To sum it up:

• Use WebP or JPEG for most photos

• Keep images around 80% quality before uploading

• Resize them to Shopify’s recommended dimensions

• Let Shopify’s system do the rest

Your store will load faster, your SEO will improve, and your customers will enjoy a smoother experience — especially on mobile.

And if all this still feels too technical or time-consuming, don’t worry.

Ecommerce Assist can optimise your images and improve your Shopify speed for you — so you can focus on running your business while we handle the technical details.