Why My Mobile Speed with Featured Image Got a Boost After Finding Answers

(cover image: speed odometer)

Hi Everyone!

Thank you, WA members, for helping me with my mobile speed. Your opinions and suggestions were greatly appreciated—special thanks to those who explained technical concepts to me. 😀❤️👍

My sincere gratitude goes out to all of you! ❤️.

This unique community offers more support than you know. Your shared experiences taught me a valuable lesson: don't be afraid to ask for help. Please count on the Wealthy Affiliate platform community for help.

Thanks to everyone who helped me! I learned mobile speed is critical to reducing load time, especially with many images.

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/website-development-programming/help-with-featured-image

How Finding Answers Can Help Improve Mobile Speed

Anytime any of you get stuck, it's best to inquire by asking questions. You can see this screenshot.

As we all experience these issues when dealing with technical problems that can leave us frustrated, the solution to finding answers is critical for me when it comes to improving my mobile speed.

Here are the benefits of finding the answers that I learned.

• Finding the root cause: The root cause of your mobile speed issues can be anything from large image sizes. Once you identify the root cause, you can take the necessary steps to fix it.
• Discovering Possible New Solutions: Sometimes, we get stuck in our thinking process and need help finding solutions. Asking questions and seeking answers from others can help us discover solutions.
• Faster problem-solving: The availability of a vast community of experts can significantly reduce the time it takes to solve a problem. You do not have to spend hours trying different solutions when someone else may already have one.
• Learning from Others' Experiences: You can learn from someone else's experience and avoid making the same mistakes by finding their answers when you ask a question.
• Staying up-to-date: Keeping up with the latest techniques and strategies for improving mobile speed is possible by visiting active communities where people discuss mobile speed issues.
• Saving Time and Money: Answering your mobile speed issues can save you time and money in the long run. Our community is a gift; please use it to your advantage.

I found a solution to fix mobile issues with featured images in my case study. Lessons learned - adjust and fine-tune image size and angle until it works. It's like cleaning spark plugs to fix a car. This will help anyone with similar problems I have.

My Case Study: Real-Life Example of Improved Mobile Speed

I downsized the featured image and minimized the JavaScript to improve my website's mobile speed performance. Even after using the Smush plugin, my mobile speed score remained low. I removed all featured images and uninstalled Smush, replacing it with the Imagify plugin.

Resize the featured image to 700 x 497. Smush caused the yellow container box to disappear. Imagify didn't give me a size, but I needed to reduce it to 269 x 137 and 50 x 50, but they didn't work. I turned off the featured image to see if that helps. Mobile speed didn't change,

Screenshot

The featured image won't be at the top of the post but will appear in the blog roll and thumbnail on the sidebar. I checked the mobile speed, no change.

1. Compress Images: I used an image compression tool another member told me to use. I used https://bulkresizephotos.com/en to reduce the size of my images by 35% or less without compromising quality. As a result, my page load time went down to 10kb.
2. Saved My Images on Desktop Folder: I took all my images from the media library and kept them in my desktop folder, then Bulk resized them to less than 35%. It did the trick; some were 3.2kb to 10kb, which sounded better. I uploaded all of them back to the media library.
3. Enable Caching in Site Manager: By enabling browser caching, I ensured that repeat visitors didn't have to reload all the elements of my website every time I visited. This helped to improve the loading speed for me.
4. Image Upload: I uploaded the first image with 10kb, which was reduced from 283 x 139 to 210 x 140=10kb. Put that in the featured image here: screenshot.

Next, I clicked update, went to my site, and opened it, and it showed this.

That looked better: 210 x 140 = 10kb from the bulk resized site.

5. Re-Tested Mobile Speed: After implementing these changes, I retested my mobile speed and saw a significant improvement, going from a low score to an excellent score. My website loads much faster on mobile devices. This is a blog roll image but not on my post. I removed that because the speed didn't change, so like others said, this is a better option until I can figure out the rest later.

As you can see, I was pleased with these results.

I considered using the AUTO OPTIMIZE plugin to fix my website's featured image display issue. Still, I decided against it due to a lack of understanding and fear of breaking my site. Although AUTO OPTIMIZE could help, I plan to experiment with it later. Regularly optimizing mobile speed is crucial for user experience and search engine rankings - we reduced load times through compression. I remain hopeful that the featured image will return to the post's top.

Final Thoughts

Through the learning curve, I discovered ways to enhance my mobile site's performance by implementing practical solutions and reducing image size. This directly leads to faster mobile speeds and ultimately improves user experience. Staying proactive in seeking new methods for optimizing mobile speed is crucial as technology constantly evolves. With most users accessing websites through mobile devices, we must optimize our blog posts for this platform.

-BrendaMZ