Optimizing 500+ CMS Images for a Real Estate AgencyWhen a boutique real estate agency based in Melbourne approached us, their Framer-built property listing site was struggling. With over 500 property images across a CMS collection, the site had ballooned to over 3GB of total image data. Pages were taking 6-8 seconds to load on mobile, and their Google PageSpeed score had dropped to 32.
Here's how they fixed it in under 30 minutes using Skwiz.
The Problem
Real estate photography is naturally heavy. Each property listing had 4-8 high-resolution photos - DSLR shots exported at full quality, typically 3-5MB per image.
The Approach
1. Initial Audit
After installing Skwiz, the agency's developer used Scan CMS to load all images from their "Properties" collection. Skwiz identified 537 images across 124 CMS items.
2. Batch Settings
They applied these settings across all images:
- Format: WebP
- Quality: 82
- Resize: Max width 1920px
3. Preview & Replace
Spot-checked 20 images using the before/after comparison slider. All passed visual inspection. The batch replace processed all 537 images in about 12 minutes.
The Results
| Metric | Before | After | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total image size | 1.7 GB | 380 MB | 78% reduction |
| Page load (mobile) | 6.8s | 2.1s | 69% faster |
| PageSpeed score | 32 | 87 | +55 points |
| Monthly bandwidth | 4.1 GB | 1.8 GB | 2.3 GB saved |
Key Takeaways
- CMS-heavy sites benefit the most - savings compound with hundreds of items
- WebP at quality 82 - the best balance of savings and quality for photography
- Resize matters - no reason to serve 4000px images for a 1920px viewport
- Set a process - make optimization part of your content workflow