Your photos are why the site is slow

Pond work photographs beautifully, which is exactly why pond contractor websites are slow. A phone takes a photo at five or six megabytes and it goes straight onto the page at full size. Twenty of those on a gallery page and somebody on a phone in a driveway gives up before it loads.

The numbers to hit

Hero images: around 1920 pixels wide, under 300KB Body and gallery images: around 1400 pixels wide, under 200KB Thumbnails: around 600 pixels wide, under 80KB

Nothing on a website ever needs to be 4000 pixels wide.

How to get there

Resize first, then compress. Squoosh, TinyPNG, or the export settings in whatever you already use. WebP format if your site supports it, otherwise JPEG.

If you are on WordPress, an image optimization plugin will handle new uploads and can usually go back and fix everything already there.

While you are in the files

Rename them before uploading. IMG_4471.jpg tells a search engine nothing. koi-pond-installation-your town-before.jpg tells it something.

Alt text

Every image needs it. It is what a search engine and a screen reader use to understand the picture.

Describe what is actually there: "Finished koi pond with waterfall in your town, your state" not "pond" and not a list of keywords.

Decorative images like background textures take empty alt text, not a description.

The rest of the speed problem

Sliders on the homepage, which load several large images before anyone sees anything. Video backgrounds, which are the single heaviest thing you can put on a page. Five different fonts. Plugins you stopped using two years ago.

Check it

Run the homepage and one gallery page through Google PageSpeed Insights on mobile. Fix whatever it lists under image delivery first, since that is almost always the biggest single win on a pond site.