In order to make your images more lightweight and your website faster, you need to create WebP images and use them on your WordPress websites. And I’m here to show you how you can convert images to WebP format.
WebP is a relatively new image format that is 30% smaller in size than JPEG images. And because of that WebP is a better format to use on websites. Small images and fast website will increase the SEO score.
Unfortunately, WordPress didn’t support WebP natively and you had to use plugins to convert images to WebP format. But that’s not the case anymore.
From WordPress 5.8 WebP is a supported image format and you can use them freely on websites built with WordPress.
Table of Contents
What Is WebP?
WebP is an image format that was developed by Google in 2010. It supports lossy and lossless compression and is much lightweight and smaller in size than JPEG or PNG format images.
It’s known that you should compress images before you upload them on the website or use some kind of plugin to compress them automatically. That works great and it really makes images smaller in size.
Also Read: How To Optimize Images
But WebP images don’t need additional compressing. When you convert PNG or JPEG to WebP, it’s already compressed and much smaller in size. So, it loads faster and website load time decreases.
And because WordPress now supports WebP, it’s a great time to start using them. And it’s very easy to create WebP images with free online tools.
Is WebP Better Than JPEG?
All image formats are great and all of them have their purpose and can be used in different situations. But what makes WebP great and a better choice than JPEG is the size and loading speed. Also, the image doesn’t lose quality.
You can use JPEG or PNG images on your website. That’s fine. Compression works very well. Actually, WebP is a kind of compressed version of JPEG. You can convert any image format to WebP.
And if you check your website on Google’s speed test tool, there you will see a suggestion to use WebP format images to decrease a website load time.
Before You Use WebP…
Although I highly recommend using this format, before you create WebP images and start uploading on websites, you should know that there is one drawback to it.
WebP is not supported by every web browser. Some browsers won’t show it and that’s a bad user experience. But in recent years WebP has become more popular and more browsers will support it.
Also Read: Web Hosting Explained
But most of the popular web browsers like Google Chrome, Opera, and Firefox have full support. You can check WebP support by web browsers here.
How To Convert JPEG To WebP
In this tutorial, I will show you how to convert JPEG to WebP with a free online tool. Of course, you can convert other formats and create WebP images with this tool.
Also, remember that never convert an already compressed JPEG image to WebP because the result will not be clear.
The free online image converting tool I will use for this tutorial is CloudConvert. With this tool, you can not only convert images but other types of files like audio, video, documents, fonts, ebooks, etc.
It allows us to make 25 conventions per day for free. If you need to make more file conventions, you can upgrade to a pro plan.
Step 1: Upload Images
First of all, in order to create WebP images, we need to upload our images into this tool. And uploading process is very basic.
Go to the website, click on the Select File button and choose the images you want to convert. You can upload multiple images simultaneously.
Not only you can upload files from your computer but also from Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.
After uploading images, you need to choose in what format you wish to convert. Choose WebP here.
Additionally, you can customize more settings by clicking the Tool icon but I don’t do it.
Step 2: Create WebP Images
Now, when you are done uploading all the images, click the Convert button and the tool starts the conversion process of your images.
It takes a couple of seconds before it converts the files. After the completion, you can download each image separately or all once in a ZIP file format.
Now you can unzip the file and you have your WebP images ready to be used on your website. And if you compare them you will see a big difference in size but almost no difference in the quality.
For example, I converted a 75.9KB JPEG image to WebP and the size of it was 39.9KB. This is a 47.5% reduction in size. And the quality of the image was the same.
Remember that you can convert other types of files too. You can even convert WebP to another format if you want.
Alternative Tools
This is one tool for image conversion and of course, there are many other free tools you can use to create WebP images. But the one I like the most is Squoosh which is a very good and powerful tool but it has its pros and cons.
The best thing with this tool is that you can manually change and tweak the settings. For example, you can control the conversion rate, see how the quality is changing, and the size of converted and original images. Also, it’s free and you can convert unlimited images.
But the downside of it is that you can only convert one image at a time. You can’t upload and convert multiple images at once. So, if you have many images to convert, this is not a good tool for you.
Conclusion
So, this is the easiest and free way to convert JPEG or PNG and create WebP images. The quality stays the same but the size reduction is huge. It means that your images will be smaller, lightweight, and will load faster that will increase the page load speed.
And because the website speed is one of the most important factors for user experience, Google, and ranking, it’s highly recommended to use small size images on websites. And WebP format is the best option.
