Akamai has introduced Image Manager, intended for use together with Akamai’s Web Performance Solutions. Image Manager provides customers with faster and easier image delivery solutions across a diverse array of devices types and browsers. Image Manager touts its ability to provide visually lossless compression, reducing page weight and improving user experiences.
Websites and applications today tend to be image-heavy, which in turn impacts speed, performance, and user experience. For example, companies err by suboptimally delivering desktop-sized images to mobile devices and tablets. On the other hand, companies that customize images specifically for delivery to certain device types without compromising artistic values, can find themselves saddled with complex and burdensome workflows and higher processing and storage costs.
Image Manager addresses the aforementioned issues by allowing users to automatically optimize web images for quality and performance, while reducing processing, storage, and other costs.
Riaz Faride, Director of eCommerce for Linen Chest, an e-retailer that adopted Image Manager, noted that: “Before Image Manager, our creative team wanted to produce crisp, high resolution images, but felt like they were ‘locked in a box’ making sure images were highly compressed to avoid causing any lag to the customer. With Image Manager, we can deliver the highest quality images with the highest level of performance. Improved site performance has led directly to a 30 percent increase in tablet traffic and a 10 percent increase in conversion rates.”
Image Manager optimizes delivery by making web images lighter and faster with a real-time algorithm that optimizes compression levels for each image.It automatically converts images to specialized file formats that are optimized for a greater number of browsers and operating systems and automatically resizes images for smaller screens, saving data and effort.
The image compression solution is also easy to deploy across a variety of existing storage and publishing workflows. It is the only solution that enables automatic optimizations without adding javascript to a page and allows artistic editing without code changes. Image Manager is backed by the world’s largest distributed computing platform, which can purge cached assets in 5 seconds.
“The old adage ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is truer than ever when it comes to delivering compelling web experiences,” explained Craig Adams, vice president, Web Performance Products, Akamai. “However, those same images have a tendency to do the exact opposite if companies don’t have an effective image management strategy in place. Image Manager makes it possible for our customers to have the best of both worlds by enabling them to automatically deliver the right image, to the right device at the right time – ultimately keeping users more engaged.”