The Challenge: Slow-Loading Websites Hurt Business

Modern websites are expected to load in under 1.5 seconds — but that’s easier said than done when your pages are full of high-quality media.

High-resolution images and promotional videos are vital for brand storytelling, but they often come with a hidden cost:

• 5MB+ files bloating the page
• Delayed First Contentful Paint (FCP)
• Low Core Web Vitals scores (especially LCP and CLS)
• Users bouncing before interaction
• Poor SEO rankings on mobile-first indexing

When we worked with a leading luxury brand, their visuals were stunning but their site performance took a hit:

• Product images were over 5MB
• Homepage took 5+ seconds to load on 4G
• Product listing page had cumulative layout shifts due to late-loading media
• SEO tools flagged slow pages and Google Search Console reported drops in crawl frequency

Our first attempt to fix this with Cloudinary worked briefly. But soon:

• Their image transformation and bandwidth costs skyrocketed
• We hit tiered limits and faced the risk of lock-in

We needed more control, lower cost, and developer flexibility.

The Solution: Our Own Media Compression Tool

To solve this problem permanently — and for more than one client — we built shrinkapi.bytive.in:

A free, developer-friendly image & video compression API designed to:

• Accept media via API or browser
• Convert images to WebP, AVIF, or optimized JPEG
• Compress videos to MP4 or WebM using ffmpeg
• Output:
  • a direct compressed response, or
  • store to DigitalOcean Spaces/AWS S3 with access keys

✅ Key Benefits

• Up to 80% smaller file sizes
• 5x faster load time for media-heavy pages
• No login, no subscription, no vendor lock-in
• Simple REST API for integration in CI/CD or CMS workflows
• Hosted, maintained, and supported by Bytive — completely free

🚀 The Real-World Results

Once integrated into the brand’s CMS and image pipeline:

• Page load time improved by 65% across devices
• Bounce rate on product pages reduced by 40%
• SEO health restored (FCP and LCP under 2.2s)
• Teams could still upload original high-res assets — no extra steps required
• Media delivered on-demand via compression pipeline
• No more recurring image/CDN bills

🛠️ Prefer the DIY Route?

Use these open-source tools for manual control:

WebP Compression:

cwebp -q 75 input.jpg -o output.webp

Video Compression with ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx264 -crf 28 output.mp4

HTML Performance Tips:

<img src="image.webp" loading="lazy" alt="..." />

<img src="default.webp" 
     srcset="img-400.webp 400w, img-800.webp 800w" 
     sizes="(max-width: 600px) 400px, 800px" />

These optimizations significantly improve:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• Time to Interactive (TTI)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

🧾 TL;DR

🎁 Why We’re Giving This Away

We built this tool to solve a real-world performance bottleneck — and quickly realised it’s a common issue across industries:

• Ecommerce
• Real estate
• Edtech
• Media & publishing

So we’ve made it:

• Free to use
• Open and stateless
• API-first, ready to plug into your stack

Use it internally or share it with your clients.

👋 Let’s Optimize Together

If your business runs on visuals — jewellery, fashion, real estate — you need a fast site. We can help.

📧 hello@bytive.in 📍 Book a Call 🔧 Try the Tool