Images are often the heaviest part of a page. Get them wrong and the site feels slow before anyone reads a word. Get them right and performance, accessibility and brand quality improve at the same time.

Choose the right format

JPEG still works well for photographs, but modern formats like WebP and AVIF often deliver the same visual quality at a much smaller file size. We export images in sensible dimensions and let the browser pick the best version for each screen.

Size images for how they are actually shown

A common mistake is uploading a 4000 pixel wide photo and letting the CMS shrink it in the layout. The browser still downloads far more data than needed. Crop and resize before upload, or generate responsive variants as part of your build or CDN pipeline.

Lazy loading and priority

Not every image should load immediately. Content below the fold can lazy load while hero images and logos above the fold should load with priority. That balance keeps first paint fast without making the page feel empty.

Alt text and context

Alt text is not an SEO checkbox. It describes the image for people who cannot see it and for search engines that need context. Write it like a short caption: what matters in the image and why it is on the page.

Headless sites and media delivery

On headless setups, images often live in WordPress while the frontend runs on Nuxt or another framework. The frontend needs reliable public URLs, sensible caching and a strategy for optimization. When media is locked behind login or proxied incorrectly, every image breaks at once. That is why we treat media delivery as part of the architecture, not an afterthought.

If your site feels slow, start with images. In most projects, a focused pass on formats, sizing and delivery gives a clearer win than adding another plugin.