Images and video are usually the first thing that makes a site heavy, and the cheapest thing to fix. Before changing hosting or rebuilding anything, run these steps; plenty of sites lose more than half their page weight in an afternoon of work.
Format matters more than the compression slider. Re-compressing an old JPEG never recovers detail that is already gone. WebP and AVIF deliver a smaller file at similar visual quality.
A 3000-pixel image shown inside a 400-pixel card is a wasted download. Export each image at the size it renders, and use srcset so phones fetch a smaller file instead of the desktop version.
The loading="lazy" attribute stops images far down the page from downloading until the visitor scrolls near them. Do not apply it to the first image above the fold; that is the one image that decides whether the page feels fast.
Always set width and height as well. Without them the layout jumps while images arrive, which annoys visitors and counts against you in speed scoring.
Keep the image count honest, too. If a section needs fourteen photographs to make its point, the problem is the section rather than the optimisation, and no format will rescue it.
A video file hosted in your own account eats bandwidth on every visit. The usual answer is to upload it to a video platform and embed it, or to show a thumbnail that opens the player on click.
If a video really must sit above the fold, keep it very short, mute it, and show a poster image until it starts.
Record the baseline first: total page weight, the largest element, and the mobile score from the same tool you will use later. Then change one thing at a time — formats, then sizes, then lazy loading — so you can tell which step actually helped.
In most audits the largest element on the page is an image or a video, which is why media work comes before any other technical change. Q8DM handles image and video optimisation inside site builds and existing-site improvements, keeping the visual quality the client approved.
Start with the homepage and your most visited product or service page, then work outward. If you want to know where the weight is actually going on your site, request a technical review through q8dm.com.