WebP image format support

[allan21]

Hi - I did some searching on this board and found no mention of the WebP image format, so I'm guessing it's not supported by Square Online yet.

WebP was developed by Google some years ago (see https://developers.google.com/speed/webp), and is advertised to create images that are 25% smaller. In my experience:

• The savings vs regular JPEG are much better than 25% - e.g. my 1080x1080 product shots go from ~200 KB JPEGs to ~47 KB in WebP, more than 75% smaller with no serious quality degradation.
• As a result, Shopify converts/serves all my JPEGs as WebP images without me even asking, and has done so for at least a year now.
• This is because more than 80% of eComm traffic (for me anyway) is users on mobile phones, and every bit of speed optimisation matters on mobile.

I tried using some WebP product images on my test Square Online site, but it couldn't show them. I like the 'image swap on hover' function, but that also fails (seems to keep trying to load a JPEG).

So... any plans to support WebP anytime soon? 

[allan21]

Update... upon further investigation:

• Square Online does automatically compress Category/Catalogue page JPEGs with WebP (like Shopify does) - good!
• Strangely it does NOT compress Item/Product pages with WebP. My ~200 KB prod shots are still that size JPEGs on mobile... and it usually (but not always) loads the same big JPEGs 3 times over (see Chrome console screenshot below) - bad!
  
  

Can someone please look into lack of WebP and that 3x defect? Thanks.

[MJD]

I believe you have strong point here, web loading times are delayed by the use of large image files, after taking a HTML course i can see the major difference between a site that's made to load fast and a site that's got too big images and my site does take longer than id like it to, to load, would be nice to see square change this up a little and add file types that aren't so large. 

[tranguyen]

Hi @allan21 and @MJD, thank you for taking the time to look into this! We've flagged this feature with the appropriate team so they can take look to improve the supported formats for the Square Online site for future updates. 

[allan21]

Thanks @tranguyen - there's a couple things here:

• Even with the current (fat) JPEGs, it slows people's sites down to load the exact same images 3 times over on an Item/Product page (see my screenshot above). That's just a bug that should be fixed asap.
• Future support for WebP everywhere would be excellent as well.

[tranguyen]

Thanks for following up on this @allan21. I will definitely check in with our team to make sure this is on their radar to resolve. 

[mimiandmason]

Hi There, 

Has this been prioritised for resolution? A site I have built for a client on Square is loading obscenely slowly compared to other Shopify sites. 

• Is there a timeline for supporting WebP or AVIF files in Square online like Shopify? 
• Has the 3 x loading JPEG bug been fixed? 
• Are there any optimisation tools available for Square? Google Page Speed Insights has lots of suggestions for reducing unused JavaScript but I can't see a way to condense this. 
  
  

Thanks heaps! 

Laura

[Breffni]

Hi there @mimiandmason, sorry for the delay. 

Can you please send a link to the website so we can take a look on our end and if needs be have our Square Online engineers take a look. 

In terms of optimisation tools - if you haven't seen it already, this support article on SEO options for Square Online may come in handy. 

Thanks! 

[JayAshton]

I've only recently come across Webp as an image format as a lot of my suppliers are now starting to use them.

It is not a surprise to learn that two years after this original post, Square still doesn't support it as a format.

Is it even on the jobs list?