Rocket Driver is now serving Webp images for all site images, which means your site images load more quickly. This change automatically boosts site performance and requires no additional effort at your end. We take care of everything, automatically and behind the scenes.

WebP is an image format developed by Google that provides lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. Using this format, images are smaller and richer than in other formats, which enables them to load more quickly. For example, WebP lossless images are 26% smaller than PNGs and 25-34% smaller than JPEG images.

In addition to converting JPEG and PNG files to WebP, we’re also adjusting the size of images so that they automatically fit their containers. It’s another effort we’re making, behind the scenes, so your sites load quickly and rank well on Lighthouse.

On every new site, images will now be in WebP format. For all existing sites, simply republish the site and the images will be automatically converted.

Note: The change doesn't affect the image name

When it comes to saving images for use on the web, there are a number of file types you can use. The three most common options are PNG, JPEG (or JPG), and GIF. 

JPEGs can display highly-detailed images with lots of colors, making them perfect for photographs. At the same time, the files are often very large and don’t always hold up well under compression.

PNGs are ideal for images without a lot of data involved, such as logos or interface screenshots. They’re excellent at retaining quality when compressed, and support transparency, but don’t work well for photographs.

GIFs are excellent for animations, but not great for saving static images.

WebP images are an image format from Google designed to let you display images on the web at a similar quality level to existing image formats, but with a smaller file size.

To achieve this, WebP provides both ‘lossy’ and ‘lossless’ compression options. The latter preserves more data, while the former makes the resulting file sizes even smaller.

25-34% smaller in size than comparable JPEG images.

26% smaller in size compared to PNGs.

You can view a full side-by-side comparison at the WebP Gallery. 

As we’ve alluded to already, the primary goal of this image format is to provide a web-focused option that’s superior to both PNG and JPEG in most situations.

Image files take up space – no matter how they’re saved. The more images and other media you add to your site, the greater the chance of laggy performance. Keeping your pages loading fast is incredibly important since slow speeds drive visitors away before they’ve even seen what you have to offer.

Compressing image files makes them smaller and more efficient, but usually comes at a loss of quality. In general, the more you compress an image, the worse it looks. However, the particular file type you’re using has an impact on how extreme the effect is.

Images saved in a WebP format can be made significantly smaller than JPEGs and PNGs at the same quality. Again, lossless WebP images function as a replacement for PNGs, and the files are about 26% smaller. Lossy WebP images, on the other hand, are around 25-34% smaller than JPEGs.

Also notable is that both types of WebP images support transparency. Transparent images are incredibly useful on the web – you can use them for logos and other branding, just as one example. JPEGs don’t offer transparency as a feature, but lossy WebP images do.