What is WebP? WebP is an image format that delivers lossless and lossy compression of images on a website or app. Lossless and lossy files are generally a lot smaller then their .jpg or .png counterparts.
- WebP lossless images are 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs.
- WebP lossy images are 25-34% smaller in size compared to PNGs.
Lossless and lossy compression are just names that tell us if the original data can be recovered when a file is uncompressed. With lossless compression it can, and with lossy it can not.
WebP & SEO
Why does WebP matter for SEO? Well, the smaller your image files are the faster your website will load. This really matters these days since a majority of your visitors will visit your website using a mobile device. Since the processing power of an average mobile device is less than the processing power of a modern desktop, many websites will load slower on a mobile device. Using WebP images can increase the speed of your website dramatically.
Check it out by running your site through Google’s web.dev
What to Do
Basically what you need is 2 versions of each image for your web-pages. Then you need to deliver the correct file to each device, depending on the browser the device is using.
- 1 version in .jpg or .pdf format to serve Safari users.
- 1 version in WebP format to serve Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera users.
If you use a content management system such as WordPress, you can use a plugin or a service like Cloudflare to deliver WebP images to the appropriate mobile devices. Unfortunately, WordPress does not currently have native support for WepP. If you’re not a coder and your website is not a WordPress site you may need a developer to implement this for you.
You can generate WebP images in a variety of ways and there are even free converters out there. Google query something like “png to webp”.
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