6 Best Image Optimization Apps for Shopify
Did you know that most visitors to your Shopify store expect pages to load in 2-3 seconds or less?
That makes a Shopify image compression app essential.
According to Think With Google, if your website takes up to five seconds to load, the probability of bounce increases by 90 percent!
You have seconds to impress people – and you can’t impress them if they’re left tapping their fingers and waiting for images to load.
They’ll hit the BACK button or, worse, just go to a competing store.
The problem is that shoppers expect an image-rich store where they can check products in fine detail.
Shopify image compression helps you keep page load speeds snappy by reducing the size of product (and other) images by:
- Stripping the image of unnecessary data
- Reducing the number of colors
- Using algorithms to combine data/patterns
And the best image optimization apps do that without affecting image quality.
Optimizing images will help your store on two important fronts:
- It will make an instant difference to the user experience
- It will boost SEO: Google counts page load times as a ranking factor and Google Images is the second most popular search engine (after Google!)
We’ve saved you the legwork by reviewing the best image optimization apps for Shopify below.
SEO Image Optimizer
Price: From FREE up to $24.99/month
Free Trial? Not applicable (free version available)
Average Shopify Rating (out of 5 stars): 4.9 (5830 reviews)
This Shopify image compression app is from Booster Apps, who specialize in fixing SEO problems for stores so that they rank better with the search engines.
They do it well – with thousands of user ratings, mostly five stars, and a large number of stores using the app (over 200,000).
The big benefits:
- 3-in-1 app to resize images, compress them, and optimize alt tags
- Even the free plan provides access to an unlimited number of image optimizations
- Boosts on-page SEO to help you show in Google Image search and drive traffic to your store
- No technical knowledge needed – you can install and set it to check images once per week
Main features:
- One-click install
- Can be set automatically optimize images every day
- Excellent support and resource bank for fixing problems
- Meta tag optimization and other SEO fixes included in the paid plan
- It will even fix broken links
Limitations
- Focused entirely on SEO – which is important – but not at the expense of user experience
Minifier
Price: From FREE up to $4.99/month
Free Trial? Not applicable (free version available)
Average Shopify Rating (out of 5 stars): 4.6 (637 reviews)
Minifier is a Shopify image compression app that also looks after alt tags and file name optimization.
This well-established app was developed from the analysis of over 32 million images using an industry-leading algorithm trusted by brands like Tesla, Microsoft, Dell, Nvidia, Kaspersky, etc.
It uses the same algorithm to help optimize images and other aspects of your store so that customers are not left waiting and SEO rankings are not penalized.
The big benefits:
- Keeps you in control of your optimization preferences with manual optimization
- Counts and analyses images and optimizes them according to your settings
- Compresses images and saves up to 80% of space without losing image quality
- If you don’t like the results you can revert back to previous images
- Auto-optimization option so that you can set and forget
- Automatic optimization of image alt tags and file names (boosts SEO by telling Google what keywords your images should rank for)
- Even the paid plans are very affordable
Main features:
- Lossy compression (up to 80% image size reduction)
- Lossless compression (up to 30% image size reduction)
- Optimized alt-tags
- Optimized file names
- PNG to JPG
- 30-day free backup image storage
- Free tools provided for automated lazy image loading and smart page prefetch
- Uses a simple pay-as-you-go model (with a price per image which is lower on the paid plans)
Limitations
- “Free version” only includes up to 60 images after which you pay $0.01 per image
- Auto-optimization option only in the paid versions
Crush Pics
Price: From FREE up to $19.99/month (Advanced version)
Free Trial? Not applicable (free version available)
Average Shopify Rating (out of 5 stars): 4.8 (685 reviews)
Crush Pics is another well-established Shopify image compression app that is well-reviewed on the Shopify App Store.
This app will look after most of what you need with your images and gets the balance right between automated and manual compression, allowing you to maintain good control of how your store looks as well as how it performs.
The big benefits:
- Quick and easy to compress all existing images (one click after you install it)
- Compresses product and asset images up to 70 percent (lossy compression)
- Auto-optimization option so that you can set and forget (paid versions only)
- Batch restore option enables you to revert back to original photos within 30 days of compression
- Can automatically rename image file names and alt tags on paid versions (better for SEO)
Main features:
- Lossless and Lossy compression available
- Balanced, Conservative & Custom compression options available
- Manual upload and compression of images (e.g., from blog posts, etc.)
- Support for GIF, PNG, and JPG images
- Paid versions apply a GB limit (from 500MB to 5GB)
- Priority support
Limitations
- Image renaming feature should be used with caution
- The free version includes a one-time-only use of up to 25 MB of images
- Only product images included in the free version
- Easy to over-spend on a higher plan than necessary because users may not know their image GB usage
TinyIMG SEO Image Optimizer
Price: From FREE to $3.99/month
Free Trial? Not applicable (free version available)
Average Shopify Rating (out of 5 stars): 5.0 (324 reviews)
TinyIMG is another Shopify image compression app that is focused on SEO but also takes into account the user experience and the need for high-quality images to sell products.
The app claims to be able to compress images by 70 percent without any loss of quality (invisible image quality reduction) using its smart algorithm (which it later qualified saying that “changes are very unlikely to be noticeable by the human eye”).
The big benefits:
- Can compress images up to 70 percent with no loss of quality
- Can be set to automatically optimize images and upload to your store (even the free version)
- Adds alt tags and filenames to improve SEO performance and send more organic traffic to your store
- Back-up for 30 days means you can restore previous images if you are not happy with the optimization result
- Easy setup – no technical expertise needed
Main features:
- User-friendly interface
- PNG to JPG conversion with resize and optimization with alt tag & file name change
- The pricing model for paid versions depends on the length of the contract (up to 24 months for cheapest rate)
- Automatically chooses the best suitable image format to fit your website
- Manual optimization available as well as automated
- Lossless image compression option
- Template design optimization available
Limitations
- The free version only includes 50 images per month and high charge ($0.03 per image) for extra images
- Some users may claim that 70 percent compression without loss of quality is not quite true – but the proof is in the pudding!
SEO Image Optimizer Pro
Price: FREE
Free Trial? Not applicable
Average Shopify Rating (out of 5 stars): 4.8 (210 reviews)
This is another Shopify image compression app where the emphasis is on improving SEO. Its development is guided by a team of SEO experts.
The app is completely free (there is no paid version) so it is growing in popularity especially for startups that are being careful of cashflow.
The big benefits:
- SEO boost from image optimization improves search rankings
- Resizes and compresses images to boost site speed
- Install/uninstall in one click without modifying code
- Easy to use with default settings
Main features:
- Automatically adds optimized alt-text
- User-friendly interface
Limitations
- Fewer image compression options than other apps – mainly focused on optimizing image title and alt text
- Short on detail – the developers could add more information about the app for people before they install it
Image Optimize
Price: From FREE up to $19.99/month
Free Trial? Not applicable (free version available)
Average Shopify Rating (out of 5 stars): 4.9 (699 reviews)
This app does a good job of balancing the needs of user experience with SEO – compressing images and looking after the alt text/filename to improve site performance while keeping product images of high enough quality for users to see the necessary detail.
This is an extremely well-reviewed app by users.
The big benefits:
- Can be set to automatically scan and compress images to minimize file size (manual compression also possible)
- Good choice of compression options – typical compression ranges from 40-60 percent, with five image compression options
- 3-day backup and restore option allows you to revert top previous images if the results are not what you want
- The free version includes all the features (but severely limits image numbers)
- Excellent support
Main features:
- Can compress product/asset/collection images
- Supports JPEG, PNG (including transparent PNGs), GIF (including animated GIFs)
- Alt text optimization using simple templates
- Descriptive file names using your keywords (better for SEO)
- Scan for new images periodically
- Easy-to-use interface
- Paid versions depend on image quantity (from 1000 – 5000 images/month)
Limitations
- The free version only allows 50 images (one time)
Shopify Image Compression Apps For The Win!
A picture can not only paint a thousand words… it can make or break your sales.
Nobody likes a slow store – not your customers nor Google (and they will penalize you for it).
Viewing high-definition product images without it slowing the page load times down is a huge part of the user experience – and poor performance will lose customers.
The Shopify image compression apps reviewed above allow you to keep your Shopify store snappy with minimal investment.
Most have free trials so check out a few of them.
The paid versions will not break the bank – and I guarantee you will get far more back from these apps than what you pay for them.
