Overview
We’ve built hundreds, if not thousands of websites over the years and sometimes we’re responsible for sourcing images for our clients. It’s important to keep in mind that all photos aren’t created equal. Did you know that bloated images can slow down a site and ultimately impact its SEO? It’s true and that’s why we created Tinybeest as an internal product to quickly and exceptionally optimize images for lightning-fast display on the web. We have found it so useful, that we decided to make it available for download to others.
The Problem
Have you ever visited a site and been transported back to another decade when it feels like it takes forever to load? It’s incredible how often we see sites that have images in the wrong format, sized incorrectly, or not optimized sufficiently. Sometimes we see PNGs as background images that aren’t using transparency. Sometimes we see 4MB JPGs that are scaled down to thumbnails. Now that Google indexes websites mobile-first, it’s even more important to make sure your site loads as quickly as possible.
Our Solution
We built Tinybeest first as a Chrome Extension. We wanted a way to quickly resize and optimize placeholder images we found on the web to populate our clients’ WordPress sites. We were surprised to see the downloads steadily increase and eventually to be featured by Google as one of their Top Developers Tools.
Next, we wanted a way to process more than one image at a time, so we build a desktop app (for Mac and Windows). Our desktop app helps users bulk-optimize, convert file formats, and resize images. We also recently added in the ability to batch optimize animated GIFs and PDF files.
