Images are critical for our websites. We use them on almost every page. However the increased use of images can drastically affect our site performance. Lazy Images or lazy loading images is such a technique that is able to reduce the page load time while still retain all the images on the page. It will only load visible images in the current view other than load all images on the same page at the same time. The rest images that are offscreen will only load when you scroll down the browser window to bring them to the browser’s viewport.
For WordPress uers, there you many free plugins you can choose from the WordPress plugin directory. These lazy load plugins are usually light and easy to setup. You just need to install and activate the plugin, it will then work instantly. If you have installed the Jetpack plugin, you can simply enable it from your Jetpack settings with one click. It works instantly. No need to tweak your posts, pages or media galleries. Lazy loading images work on both computers and mobile devices, especially great for mobile users when they are in low-bandwidth or expensive-bandwidth environments. It is fully compatible with other Jetpack image tools, such as the free image CDN. You can use it in conjunction with other images tool to make your site load even faster. See also this guide to enable free WordPress CDN for images.
How to activate lazy Images for WordPress?
Log on your WordPress dashboard as administrator. Click Jetpack > Settings from the left panel. The Writing tab opens at the right pane. Scroll down to the Performance & speed section. Click the toggle to activate Enable Lazy Loading for images. You’re done!
