What is the ideal size for the featured image in a Shopify blog?

Why image size is important in Shopify

If you have a Shopify blog and care at all about SEO, you should be careful about image weight on your website.

Images are worth a thousand words and can be a good way to create a great user experience. However, too many big images will slow your site down, which is bad for both SEO and user XP! This is why it’s important to find the perfect balance between good quality and reasonable sizing.

If your theme allows it, you can activate the lazy loading of images. Your site will then load images only when the user scrolls down instead of all of them at the same time. It enhances site speed and thus, SEO and user experience.

Ideal size for featured images in a Shopify blog

In Shopify, featured images are what will appear as thumbnails when users navigate through your blog. We recommend a ratio of 4:3 but 16:9 can also be suited depending on how your theme blog page is set up.

On your blog page — the page listing all of your blog articles — images are generally quite small, so you don’t need to have a high resolution for them. However, some themes allow you to use the featured image at the top of your blog post. In this case, the image will appear full screen at some point and would need to be of better resolution.

A few tips to sum this up:

• use a ratio of 4:3 or 16:9 for your featured images
• use .jpg images instead of .png (as they are lighter)
• use a 800 x 600 px resolution if you don’t use the featured image in the content of your blog post
• use a 1920 x 1440 px resolution if you show the featured image at the top of your article

Quick tip: Optimize your image with a third-party app

Once you have created your featured image on the software of your choosing (Canva, Photoshop, Illustrator…), your file weight might be a bit heavy. In order to optimize site speed and SEO, you can use a third-party app to reduce the weight of your image without degrading its quality. We recommend https://imagify.io which is free and doesn’t even request you to create an account.

How to upload the featured image in your blog post

• Go to your blog post. In the Featured image section, upload your image or drag and drop it.