How WebP Images Will Be Used In Business In 2022

How will WebP images be used in business? Good question. One of the biggest technological challenges faced in business is the adoption of new technologies. If most people can’t utilize the new tech, whatever it may be, then the idea isn’t enough. WebP images are an improvement in web image formats. According to Apple, WebP images will be supported by the new Safari14 Beta. This will change the way that WebP will cover the internet. We can expect to see a wider use of WebP images throughout the end of 2021 and into 2022.

What Is WebP?

In 2010, despite being a “new” image format, WebP was developed by Google. WebP is like JPEG or PNG. However, unlike PNG and JPEG, it supports lossy and lossless compression. This makes WebP images much smaller than its peers. Okay, that all sounds good, but what is lossy and lossless compression? It’s really cool. So, the images are compressed, made smaller, to save space. In lossy compression, the image is recreated as a copy of the original with minute and un-noticeable differences. Lossless compression is just what it sounds like. The image is compressed without the loss of any data.

Lossy compression would be slightly smaller than lossless since it recreates the image. With lossless compression your file size for the WebP image would be about 25% smaller than PNG image files. Lossy, however, would be about 35% smaller than a JPEG image files. Even though PNG has been around for longer than JPEG, in my experience, JPEG seems to be more mainstream than PNG and used more often. So, you can imagine the space you’ll save by switching to WebP.

Why Are WebP Images Important For Business?

WebP images save space. Size matters when it comes to the internet and especially your website. If you use larger images on your website, you may run into loading issues. For example, your website takes too long to load. Increased load times will increase your bounce rate as less people will be patient enough to stick around and wait for your webpage to figure itself out. This is the primary reason why this new image format will be better for businesses. Especially for businesses that have huge websites with tons of images. Let’s say you have an e-commerce website, and you sell 1,000 products. That could result in thousands of images across your entire site. Imagine cutting down the size of all those images by 25%-35% and now you can really see the benefit of the smaller, compressed, image sizes.

Because of the added size of PNG and JPEG images, website creators, usually, have to decide between having a fast-loading website or really vivid, rich, user side content. Even if your site is well optimized, having those larger images will slow down the load time of your website. Learn more about what makes a great website here. Now you can have both. Not only can you use larger, clearer, images but they’ll load faster as well.

The Tech Behind Our Future Preferred Images

There is new technology being rolled out for the WebP image format to utilize; it’s called predictive coding. This is a new algorithm used in the encoding process. This is similar to the way that video coding works. Predictive coding uses blocks of pixels to predict each block’s value. Then, it encodes the differences between those blocks. The same pixel can be used multiple times in the same file. The redundant data can then be removed. So, only the data that changes from each block is saved. This, in turn, reduces the storage space required.

Adoption Rate

This all sounds great, so why aren’t we widely using WebP images already? Web browsers haven’t fully adopted the WebP image format yet. Edge, Chrome, and Firefox all have support for WebP images. As we mentioned earlier, Apples Safari14 Beta will allow the use of WebP images as well. Think about how many iPhones are being used. Apple makes up a HUGE portion of internet traffic. How do they do it? Safari. If Safari doesn’t support WebP then a large chunk of people in the world are not utilizing WebP. If you need more information about WebP, you can find it here. This chart will show you which browsers support, and which version of that browser supports, supports WebP images. With the introduction of WebP to Safari, you can bet that we’ll all be seeing WebP images, on a regular basis, in the very near future.

Faceless Marketing

Here at Faceless Marketing, we develop engaging websites that speak clearly and directly to your target audience. Our compelling designs showcase your brand personality and key attributes. We build or improve business websites, so they are easy to use, both internally and client-facing. You save time managing your site and take potential customers from interested to engaged.

If your website looks unappealing or outdated, your audience will immediately have a negative impression of your business. They will not find your website appealing, which deters them from your page. You will miss out on leads because they will leave your page for a competitor’s page. Marketing moves fast, but so do we. Our marketing experts have worked with many businesses – large and small to develop their customer base and number of subscribers. Reach out to Faceless Marketing for a quote or FREE consultation. Call 1-800-357-1299 or email info@faceless.marketing.