What is WebP?

In a nutshell WebP is the latest image format that provides superior lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. By using WebP you can create smaller, richer images, that on average save around 30% or more in compressed file size over a traditional image format such as JPEG or PNG.

How does this affect my Shopify store?

Smaller compressed images equal faster download times, less network bandwidth usage and reduces the image load delay you might experience on some mobile networks in areas of poor coverage. All of these things combine to pages becoming noticeably faster and result in a speedier shopping experience for your customers.

What do I need to do?

Nothing! That’s right, you don’t have to do anything. Shopify is already automatically serving WebP images (where it can) over JPEGs and PNGs.

If you have previously uploaded a catalogue of images to your website and are concerned you'll have to start again to take advantage of WebP - you won’t. Shopify stores will detect the legacy image format and serve a WebP version instead - pretty cool eh! 😎

WebP is natively supported in Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera browsers. Where WebP isn’t currently supported (Safari and IE) your Shopify store will know to fallback to the original JPEG or PNG file format.

In conclusion

Web images are almost always the largest file size culprits. But with the WebP file format images can be significantly compressed in file size. This means that when combined with a well optimised website you can almost always guarantee a faster website. For you this means a better experience for your customers, increased conversion rates and no more slow page loads!