Adding ImageEngine image CDN for your Shopify store can accelerate page loading, improve SEO, and increase sales conversions. With modification of your Shopify template, you can direct ImageEngine to further optimize images from your current Shopify CDN.
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With its built-in Device Detection and real-time image optimization, ImageEngine accelerates Shopify sites.
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“Helped Our Performance During Peak Holiday Season”
“With minimal configuration, our images were served in a compressed fashion, and dimension for the appropriate screensize, using modern file types like WebP. Our marketing team uses large images and this was impacting performance.”
An image CDN has edge servers strategically positioned around the globe. These edge servers detect devices and cache optimized images. When a similar device requests an image again, the image CDN responds immediately with the already-cached optimized image. By pushing optimized images closer to requesting customers with logic to deliver immediately from cache, an image CDN can often provide a 50% faster web page download time.
By default, Shopify provides a Content Delivery Network (CDN) through Fastly CDN. But Shopify eCommerce sites can achieve even better performance with an image CDN for Shopify like ImageEngine.
A standard CDN is a global network of servers that optimizes web performance by using the node closest to the user for faster delivery of assets. In contrast, an image CDN takes web performance to the next level. An image CDN adds device detection and image optimization prior to delivering images from the CDN. An image CDN for Shopify platforms decreases image payload, delivers images tailored exactly to each requesting device, and instantly sends images from the edge of the network. The result is faster page loading that drives higher SEO ranking for your Shopify eCommerce site and better user experience.
When you optimize images through ImageEngine’s image CDN for your Shopify platform, it will add device detection and image optimization automatically. The improvement is dramatic. Without device detection and only using screen size breakpoints, one can reduce image size by 40%. But a device-aware image CDN like ImageEngine can increase the image payload reduction up to 80%.
To achieve the most optimized images on your Shopify store, designers need to tailor the image to the capabilities and size of the device. Typically, when front end designers want to optimize images, they think of the pixel width of the screen. But effective optimization requires much more than setting breakpoints for the screen size. By fine tuning and using additional capabilities like device model, operating system version, screen size, pixels per inch, browser version, and ability to support specific next-gen image formats, one can optimize images much more effectively.
The key here is having a device detection solution that automatically feeds the image optimizer these parameters. The device detection needs to instantly identify the requesting device and supply the relevant image parameters to the image optimization system.
ImageEngine automates the integration between device detection, image optimization, and the CDN delivery.
Adding these additional parameters increases both the effectiveness and the complexity of the optimized image. As a result, it is best to automate both the device detection to ensure image optimization. Building and maintaining such a system is very complicated. Devices and their capabilities are changing and evolving quickly. In 2011, there were only 15,000 device profiles. Today, there are more than 80,000. Keeping track of these requires a solution like ScientiaMobile’s WURFL device detection. ImageEngine leverages WURFL device detection when it automatically optimizes images for web.
In addition, next-gen image formats are evolving quickly. Using WebP, JPEG 2000, or AVIF image formats requires expertise on how to leverage the detected device, browser, and screen parameters in the optimized image for web processes.
ImageEngine will automatically compress and use the optimal image format for the requesting device. The improvement in web performance, SEO, and revenue conversion more than pays for ImageEngine’s best in class service.
Optimized images, combined with a CDN will generate a range benefis for Shopify platforms. Benefits og image CDNs fall into several categories:
The most immediate benefit that image optimization provides is improved web performance. A number of tools exist to evaluate your site's web performance, including webpagetest and GT Metrics and others. Perhaps the most influential is Google’s Pagespeed Insights.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights tracks a number of web performance metrics for both Desktop and Mobile. Many critical metrics are grouped as Core Web Vitals. Web performance metrics include Speed Index, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Time to Interactive (TTI). Image payload is a major contributor to poor web performance, so optimizing images by compressing and converting to next-gen image file formats helps immensely.
Google recognizes how web performance impacts user experience. And it wants to reward websites that provide both. Therefore, Google has integrated its scoring of web performance (Core Web Vitals) into its search engine ranking algorithm. For companies in a crowded, competitive marketplace, this means that if all other SEO relevance issues are equal, the site with superior web performance will receive a higher rank. And ranking has a clear economic impact on how many visitors come to your Shopify store.
ImageEngine’s image optimization has improved the SEO rankings of its customers. Many of its Shopify platform users report how their search engine ranking on top keywords improves considerably once they integrate an image CDN like ImageEngine.
ImageEngine makes it easy to integrate image optimization on your Shopify store website.
Shopify uses a template system that allows users to create impressive webshops with snippets of self-contained code. In order to implement ImageEngine, a webshop owner (or his/her web developer) just needs to modify the existing image tags in various templates that make up the webstore.
The good news is that images can stay where they are stored today. No need to move them from where they are stored today on your Shopify store or elsewhere.
And the code becomes more streamlined. No more bloated responsive image coding that requires the generation of multiple image variants. ImageEngine removes all of that with just a single redirect to the ImageEngine service. It will compress, convert to next-gen image formats, and deliver via its image CDN all in one seamless solution.
Integrating an image CDN like ImageEngine with your Shopify platform improves customer engagement on site which can lead to more conversions at checkout from a Shopify eCommerce or retail website.
Studies show that many sites load slowly - on average 9 seconds. But with image optimization, the pages load faster, frequently moving below 5 seconds. This has a positive impact on conversion rates - frequently doubling them.
Test your site with our ImageEngine demo tool and see what improvements can be made.
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