[intro]On the EKM online shop platform, it is only Design Images that will need optimising; Product and Category Images are optimised by the platform automatically. You need to optimise your Design Images to ensure that they load quickly for your customers and visitors to your EKM online shop. [/intro]

Whether you have used Image Builder on your EKM online shop, a graphics program such as Coral or Photoshop or a platform such as Pixlr or Canva, it's essential that you optimise them before you upload them onto your shop. In the most basic sense, optimising an image consists of removing any excess data from the image, making sure that there is no loss of detail or resolution. A good way of simplifying this is to imagine that your image is a single piece of paper and a set of twenty felt-tip pens. If you draw your image onto the paper, you might only use one or two colours, and the space on the paper and the pens you don't use are the superfluous data. If you remove the excess data from the image, it will help the page load quickly and provide an excellent experience for visitors to your EKM online shop. 

[tips]If you have used Image Builder to create your Design Images, you will need to download these and optimise them before uploading them back onto your EKM online shop. This is because images created this way are saved as layers, which allows you to edit them again at a later date. However, to improve their loading speed, it is essential to optimise the image and use the optimised version instead of the Image Builder version on your EKM online shop.[/tips]

1. To do this, you will need to use TinyPng. Download the relevant images from your EKM online shop (if applicable), and then upload up to 20 images at a time to TinyPng by dropping them in the box at the top of the page:

2. When TinyPng has optimised your Design Images, you’ll see a summary of your files and how much they have been compressed. Click the Download All button:

3. Your optimised Design Images will now be in a zipped file in the download folder on your computer. You then need to add these Design Images to your File Manager and assign them to the relevant elements of your Theme, replacing the non-optimised versions if applicable. 

[more]

• EKM Logo Builder
• Carousels
• EKM Image Builder
• EKM Themes Guide

[/more]

[contact] If you need our help with your EKM online shop, contact your Ecommerce Expert or the Customer Support Team, who will be able to point you in the right direction. We're open from 8am-6pm weekdays and 9am-5.30pm weekends. If you'd like to suggest a feature or an upgrade on any of the EKM platforms, please let us know on the EKM Suggestions Board. If you have a non-account-specific question to ask the EKM Team, join us in the EKM Community. [/contact]