LazyLoading Images – How to Boost Your Website Speed

Lazy loading (lazyloading) is a powerful technique to improve website performance, especially for image-heavy websites. By delaying the loading of non-essential resources until they are needed, lazy loading images can significantly speed up page load times.
Let’s break down the key aspects and tools related to lazy loading to help you optimize your website site effectively.

What is Lazy Loading?

Lazy loading is a strategy that loads content only when it is needed, rather than all at once. This means images, videos, and other media are loaded as they come into the user’s viewport, reducing initial page load time and improving overall user experience.

For example, an e-commerce site with hundreds of product images can benefit greatly from lazy loading, ensuring only the visible products load initially, thus speeding up the browsing experience.

Lazy loading offers numerous benefits beyond speed optimization. It improves user experience by making the page appear faster and more responsive.
It also reduces server load and bandwidth usage, which can be particularly beneficial for mobile users and those with limited data plans.

Example: When a user scrolls down a webpage, images further down the page load as they become visible. This technique minimizes initial data usage and speeds up the perceived page load time.

So, an e-commerce site with hundreds of product images can benefit greatly from lazy loading, ensuring only the visible products load initially, thus speeding up the browsing experience.
And statistics taught us there are plenty of e-commerce sites around.

LazyLoad Images: Enhance Your Site’s Speed

Images can significantly slow down your site if not managed properly. Implementing lazy load for images ensures they load only when the user scrolls to them. This not only speeds up the initial load time but also conserves bandwidth.

For instance, on a blog with numerous images, lazy loading can prevent all images from loading at once, thus enhancing performance and reducing server load.

Here’s an example of the HTML code using lazyloading technique on the image manually.

<img src="yourimage.jpg" alt="Description" loading="lazy">

If you’d like to exclude a particular image from lazyloading, you’d use: loading=”skip-lazy”.

If you’d like to lazyload iframe instead of an image, you’d want to target the <iframe> tag like this:

<iframe src="video.html" loading="lazy"></iframe>

Naturally, doing it by hand can be tedious and unpractical like silent alarm clock. You’d like to do it more efficiently. On WordPress CMS, there are a plethora of solid out-of-the-box solutions, and I’ll name a few I found best.

Exclusion from lazy loading

When you find that some file is lazyloaded despite your exclusion list, you might need to turn of the native WordPress lazyloading. You can do it with the following PHP via functions.php:

add_filter('wp_lazy_loading_enabled', '__return_false');

If it’s still being lazyloaded, and you are using Elementor, you’ll need to turn off their optimize image loading settings. Or any other theme/plugin lazyloading setting.

WordPress LazyLoad: A Game Changer for Your Site Speed

WordPress offers various plugins to implement lazy loading effortlessly. These plugins can be a game-changer, particularly for sites with heavy media content. Some notable plugins include WP Rocket, Perfmatters, LiteSpeed Cache, FlyingPress and EWWW IO.

• WP Rocket: This plugin integrates lazy loading into its suite of optimization tools, ensuring images and iframes are loaded only when needed. Its user-friendly interface makes it accessible for beginners and experts alike.
  

• Perfmatters: This lightweight plugin allows you to enable lazy loading for images, videos, and iframes, among other performance tweaks. It’s designed to complement other caching plugins, providing an extra layer of optimization.
  

• LiteSpeed Cache: If you’re using LiteSpeed servers, this plugin is a must. It provides server-level caching and optimization, including lazy loading, which can significantly enhance your site’s performance.

• EWWW IO: Primarily an image optimization plugin, EWWW IO also offers lazy loading features. It’s particularly useful for compressing images and reducing their load time.

• FlyingPress: is another excellent plugin for managing various optimization on WordPress sites, lazy loading included. It offers comprehensive lazy loading features, including the ability to lazy load images, iframes, and videos.
  
  FlyingPress also provides options to exclude above-the-fold content from lazy loading, ensuring the initial view is fully loaded for a better user experience.
  Its advanced settings allow you to customize the lazy loading behavior, providing granular control over how and when elements load.

Advanced Topics in Lazyloading: Img Loading and More

Beyond basic image lazy loading, other elements such as iframes, videos, and ads can also be lazy-loaded. This comprehensive approach ensures all non-essential elements are deferred, providing a seamless browsing experience.

If you are on the WordPress CMS, forementioned plugins offer settings to enable lazy loading for these additional elements, providing a holistic approach to performance optimization.

Conclusion – Lazyloading a old friend

So, there you have it – lazy loading is like that friend who only shows up when you need them, but always makes things better when they do.
Implement lazy loading, by doing so you’re not only speeding up your site but also giving your users a smoother, faster experience.

That way, you’ll give your WordPress site a turbo boost and reduce the data transfer server load. Remember, in the digital race, it’s all about who gets to the finish line (or loads the fastest) first.

Happy lazyloading!

Key Takeaways

• Lazy Loading: A technique to load content as it becomes visible, enhancing page speed and user experience.
• Lazy Load Images: Essential for image-heavy sites to improve load times and reduce server load.
• WordPress Lazy Load: Utilize plugins like WP Rocket, Perfmatters, LiteSpeed Cache, FlyingPress, and EWWW IO for efficient lazy loading.
• Benefits of Lazy Loading: Speed, reduced server load, and improved user experience.
• Advanced Lazy Loading: Extend lazy loading to iframes, videos, and ads for comprehensive optimization.