Qala ImgProxy is our lightning fast imaging solution that comes with all Synotio hosting packages from 1500/month and up. We will from May 2022 include this in every new site we make for customers, and we will be able to upgrade older sites on demand. This is a fantastic improvement for all our customers.
An average 30% improvement in page speed
Why are we so excited about Qala ImgProxy? Because the speed of your site matters. It matters to end-users and as such, it matters to your ranking on Google. By improving the images on a website, Qala ImgProxy makes the site on average 30% faster.
How does it work?
The first thing Qala ImgProxy does is display images that load quickly on mobiles. This is a smaller version of any low-quality loading image designed for handheld devices. Often many have a large announcement image on the front page that sets the tone for the site. Qala ImgProxy takes that image, resizes it, and makes a small compressed version of it before serving it. This means that instead of something like 950KB, we get 50KB.
After the page has loaded and the user can interact with the site, Qala ImgProxy then automatically loads a high quality image in the place where the low quality image was – after checking if it is possible to do in the browser. Qala ImgProxy supports WEBP as well as AVIF – the latest and most performing image quality format. The only problem is that AVIF doesn’t work on older devices, so WEBP is what we usually recommend.
Thanks to its deep integration with WordPress, Qala ImgProxy doesn’t just give you a better format – it actually checks the screen resolution of the visitor and displays an image that has been resized to fit that particular screen, based on the viewable area (container) being of a certain size. This way if a user is on a large desktop computer they get a larger high quality image, whereas on a mobile device they get a much smaller image. This has a huge impact on speed and performance for the end user as much less image data is served.
When does it not work?
Qala ImgProxy is designed to work first and foremost with our WordPress and WooCommerce packaging, Qala. However, this component will work with other themes, as long as the theme does not use customised methods for image retrieval (like Divi, Astra, etc do). Then unfortunately only part of the functionality will work.
Interested in how we can improve the speed of your website? Don’t be shy. Get in touch with us.