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Thumbnail, toenail, supersize photos (under the hood)

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George Nenni

George Nenni

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Apr 13, 2012
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#1
This question may feel too techie, but we see dealer website speed issues when the search results page (SRP) thumbnail/toenail images are larger than they need to be. We've got a dealer who uses a Homenet reseller for taking pictures, but they only upload a single 1024 x 768 image, so Dealer Inspire uses this same image for the thumbnail, VDP image, etc. Shouldn't these systems capture multiple flavors (sizes) of each image, that is optimized for SRPs and VDPs? Otherwise the SRP ends up weighing over 6 megabytes, killing the user experience with slow page loads. I know from my Dealer Specialties days, we created 6 or more images for every picture captured, to solve this issue. Does anyone know if Homenet does the same?
 
#2
It wasn't long ago that HomeNet increased the image sizes they would accept from an early internet standard. Soooooo…. what do you think?

We have significant issues in making responsive designs around the HomeNet image restraints. We also use DataOne to bridge some of the holes and standardizations and that comes with eVox images. The connection DataOne and eVox has is strong! We were using Chrome before and found that to be archaic for the technology we make. In order to meet the responsive designs that are fairly standard in the world today we are toying with the idea of utilizing eVox as the initial thumbnail with a "picture in picture" component for the dealer's uploaded image we receive from HomeNet. We'll see how well it works.

Not to put HomeNet down too far because HomeNet is absolutely the best place to source a dealer's inventory. Their advanced rules and customizations cut a lot of need to build deep inventory rules. But yes, their treatment of imagery is behind the times.
 
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#3
I'm being told that Homenet will only allow one image resolution per photo, so thumbnails and full size VDP pics will have the same underlying file (making SRPs weigh over 10 megabytes on a Dealer Inspire site). Ideally you would have a 320 x 240 for the SRP thumbnail, and a much higher resolution image for the VDP.

It also looks like some website providers create multiple versions of each image, allowing the SRPs to be better optimized, faster loading:

Some website providers automatically create the multiple sizes, in other cases inventory providers will send images in various sizes.

Here is an example of the way DealerOn separates the low vs. high res images, with the pixel width in the URL
/inventoryphotos/10498/1ftfw1et2bfa96943/ip/thumbs/1.jpg?width=320
/inventoryphotos/10498/1ftfw1et2bfa96943/ip/1.jpg?height=400

Here is an example of the way Dealer.com separates the low vs. high res images, with the pixel width in the URL:
/0644/72e3091c7eec452ec1afbab7a694fc97x.jpg?impolicy=downsize_bkpt&imdensity=1&w=520
/0644/72e3091c7eec452ec1afbab7a694fc97x.jpg?impolicy=resize&w=768

So is this a Homenet issue, or a Dealer Inspire issue?
 
#4
Every website vendor should be handling this part. The inventory provider simply sends a feed of images over in one size - the website provider should be creating the thumbnails and correct sizes to match their platform.

Using the larger image on the SRP is very taxing and will definitely show up poorly on Page Speed Insights, etc.

Both DealerOn and Dealer.com in your example above are doing the resizing themselves. DealerOn is doing it ahead of time, where it looks like Dealer.com is resizing the images on the fly as it serves them up, then caching it for anyone else who asks for that same resized image.

I prefer the DealerOn strategy, where you store and can use both sizes of pre-generated images.
 
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#7
@georgenenni based purely on the first DI site I could find, it looks like they are using the same size everywhere
https://www.jamestownhonda.com/inve...-sonata-base-fwd-4d-sedan-5npe24af4hh447374/#

If you enlarge the inventory photo, view it on the SRP or view it in "small mode", it's always this image:

I'm not sure why they would do that. Maybe they're hotlinking their images instead of hosting them themselves?
Wordpress has plenty of image resizing functionality built right in, so they could even borrow that if they wanted to.
 
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#8
craigh said:
@georgenenni based purely on the first DI site I could find, it looks like they are using the same size everywhere
https://www.jamestownhonda.com/inve...-sonata-base-fwd-4d-sedan-5npe24af4hh447374/#

If you enlarge the inventory photo, view it on the SRP or view it in "small mode", it's always this image:

I'm not sure why they would do that. Maybe they're hotlinking their images instead of hosting them themselves?
Wordpress has plenty of image resizing functionality built right in, so they could even borrow that if they wanted to.
Click to expand...

Hotlinking to vAuto/HomeNet's image URL significantly cuts down on hosting and bandwidth and ultimately expenses. A single full-sized image is usually between 300k-350k. A set of 28 full-sized images I just pulled up was 9.2 MB. They're not all this big, most were in the 6-8mb range.

WordPress's built-in image resizing tool can easily resize into the smaller images, but what I found is it takes a ton of server processing power to do so. Especially when you're dealing with 20-30 pictures per vehicle.

Using Lazy Loading and caching images overcomes most of the load time issues, especially if using a slider or slide show.
 
#9
csabatka1 said:
Hotlinking to vAuto/HomeNet's image URL significantly cuts down on hosting and bandwidth and ultimately expenses. A single full-sized image is usually between 300k-350k. A set of 28 full-sized images I just pulled up was 9.2 MB. They're not all this big, most were in the 6-8mb range.
Click to expand...
If they was offering budget websites, this argument might make sense. I don't believe that's the business they're in though.
You can host images for dealers on S3, cache them and serve them up tens of thousands of times for small money.
Not hosting a dealer's photos means you are reliant on another vendor to have perfect uptime and not delete the images when the dealer changes vehicle photos, etc.

csabatka1 said:
WordPress's built-in image resizing tool can easily resize into the smaller images, but what I found is it takes a ton of server processing power to do so. Especially when you're dealing with 20-30 pictures per vehicle.
Click to expand...

Should not be an issue at all. I have a dealer with 75 photos on every vehicle and we resize them from 2mb+ down to a ~150kb large image and a ~20kb thumbnail in a matter of seconds. Again, these sorts of resources are not costly at all.

csabatka1 said:
Using Lazy Loading and caching images overcomes most of the load time issues, especially if using a slider or slide show.
Click to expand...

This doesn't change the amount of data being sent and means that mobile customers are still going to be downloading the larger images, rather than optimized versions. If the inventory provider optimizes the images it's not going to be a significant issue, but again that's relying on a different vendor to provide that, when I believe it should be part of your website.
 
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#10
Digging up a thread.... If you are serving from the HomeNet CDN, you can request different sizes on the fly.

Just a few examples (note the requested dimensions):

Gallery (640x480):

Tiny thumbnail (160x40):

Full size:

Reference
developer.homenetauto.com

HomeNet Developer Portal

developer.homenetauto.com developer.homenetauto.com

-Alex
 
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