FooGallery comes complete with Lazy Loading. But what is this feature? And why do you want it in your media plugin?

What is Lazy Loading?

Lazy loading, also known as ‘on demand loading’, delays the loading of an element on your site until it is required. What this means is that images, for example, will only load when the user scrolls down to them. In other words, images aren’t preloaded when a page is opened. Rather, they are only loaded when they appear on the screen. And if a user doesn’t scroll down to them, they aren’t downloaded at all.

Why Lazy Loading is a must-have feature

There are plenty of benefits to lazy loading. To start with, it adds to the efficiency of your site. Because not all of the images load as the page opens, your start up time is kept to a minimum.

Lazy loading uses less data. This makes it more efficient for your users, who won’t be downloading all of the images every time they access your site or load a page with a large amount of images on it. The dynamic content delivery provided by on demand loading makes for an overall better experience.

With the increasing use of visual media, such as images and videos, you run the risk of bogging down your site with large files that take time to download. Visitors to your site don’t want to wait for images to download, and when this happens, will often leave your site. Lazy loading helps prevent this from happening, which can help with your bounce rate as well.

A potential problem is that because files are loaded on demand, they may not be recognized by search engines. But to get around this, FooGallery integrates with the Yoast SEO plugin and inserts all the images in a gallery into the sitemap that Yoast SEO generates. This is done automatically, eliminating this issue as Google crawls the sitemap and “knows” about the gallery images.

FooGallery now comes standard with lazy loading.This gives you a faster page load and more streamlined user experience. And there is no downside, as FooGallery still gives you the benefit of SEO. Have a look at the FooGallery demos or download this media plugin now at foo.gallery

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