5 ways to make your website more sustainable
Published on 16th January 2023
No one can deny that sustainability is the ‘it’ buzzword, and it's not going away either.
Consumers today are far more eco-aware than even two years ago. They expect businesses
they buy from to incorporate sustainability throughout the processes and supply chains.
They want them to prioritise reducing their carbon footprint, reducing energy usage and
minimise waste.
By being more creative with the design, content and building with energy consumption in
mind, your website could reduce your carbon footprint. There are also additional benefits to
these sustainability actions – it boosts your website’s efficiency, increases page loading
speeds, improves your SERPs ranking, and enhances usability.
Focusing on the physical assets and supply chains is one thing, and many business owners
are now singing off the same hymn sheet and implementing sustainable practices. However,
they are forgetting about one major aspect of their business that still has a relatively large
carbon footprint and is a big user of electricity – their website. The internet produces higher
greenhouse gas emissions than the airline industry, at 3.8% compared to 2.1%.
How does a website use electricity?
On the surface, it might be hard to fathom how your website can use electricity, certainly to
the point of increasing your carbon footprint. It’s just pages sitting on the internet, isn’t it?
Well, essentially, yes, but a data centre provides your website’s internet access and goes
through a transmission network to be visible on the internet. All the devices used to view and
use your website are powered by electricity.
So, the more the internet is used globally, the greater the carbon footprint created due to the
massive internet power consumption. Indeed, the global internet uses about the same
amount of electricity as the UK – staggering.
How to reduce your website’s carbon footprint?
The good news is that you can significantly reduce the amount of electricity your website
uses, directly and indirectly, with just a few simple adjustments.
1. Ditch custom fonts – when you build a website, there are standard pre-installed
‘system fonts’ that you can use, such as Ariel, Times New Roman, Verdana, Courier
and even Calibri. However, in recent years, website builders have been using
‘custom fonts’ to differentiate areas of their websites from their competitors. But every
custom font used on your website requires coding; it’s that coding that ups the
energy levels your website has to use to be viewable. It might not be possible to
eliminate all your custom fonts – many logos and brand identities use them – but you
can reduce energy consumption by reducing other areas of your website that use
these fonts. There are other ways to help your content stand out using system fonts:
incorporating bold, italics, capitals, or just a bigger font size.
2. Review your imagery/videos – we know that visuals sell; it’s far easier for
consumers to absorb images and videos than text, and it’s a better way of getting
your message across. However, your visuals take up a lot of energy when loading
onto your website. So, here are a few ideas to reduce this energy usage:
a. Videos – videos use more energy to process and load than any other form of
content on your website. So, first, think about whether you need them.
Secondly, do you need your videos to play automatically as soon as they are
loaded? Probably not, so think about switching off the autoplay button. Also,
consider the length of your videos – can you get your message out in a
shorter, more succinct way? Again, probably. Animation – it looks great,
doesn’t it? But, as with videos, they use a lot of energy. So, consider
restricting the animation on your website to just the Home page. If you need
to or want to, keep the animation, and make sure it is built as energy-efficient
and lightweight as possible. Alternatively, think about using a graphic or
series of graphics to get the same message across.
b. Images – there are a ton of websites today that are image-led. Now, that’s
not bad; however, the bigger the image file size, the more energy it uses to
transfer the data. Plenty of websites have not reduced the size of their
imagery, and not only does this impact the website’s loading speed and key
SEO parameters, but it also uses too much energy to load. So, think about
the number of images on your website – do you need all of them? Then think
about the image file size, reducing it as much as possible, optimising the
images by compressing the file size without losing the quality, and changing
to a more efficient file format, like WebP.
3. Get SEO optimised – yes, ensuring your website is fully SEO’d can reduce the
website’s energy consumption, and improve its efficiency, so it’s a win-win situation.
Optimising your website for search terms means consumers spend less time
browsing the search results and visit fewer pages and go directly to the pages that
match their query. The same applies to your website content; reduce the amount of
copy so that it is far more concise, direct and clear on each page, thereby delivering
real value. Fewer clicks equal less energy – simple.
4. Analyse the data centre – not every data centre is focused on reducing its energy
consumption or how it cools the systems. At it’seeze, we use a UK-based data centre
that uses natural fresh air to cool the data storage units for 90% of the year,
significantly cutting down on the energy they use. This also gives them an excellent
PUE (Power Usage Efficiency) of 1.2. Only 3% of websites are currently powered by
renewable energy, so maybe it’s time to switch to a ‘green’ web hosting provider.
5. Streamline the user experience – this is another area that you may not think
impacts the energy level your website uses, but think about it... if pop-up banners or
a sign-up process appears every time a user clicks on a page, or the check-out
process takes more than one or two clicks, how much time is the user spending on
your website? Creating a sustainable website is about making the user’s journey not
only a pleasant experience but also shorter.
By being more creative with the design and content and building with energy consumption in
mind, your website could reduce your carbon footprint. There are also additional benefits to
these sustainability actions – it boosts your website’s efficiency, increases page loading
speeds, improves your SERPs ranking, and enhances usability.
At it’seeze, we design, develop and build sustainable bespoke websites that are fully SEO
optimised, user-friendly, affordable and rank highly in Google’s search engine results. You
can be confident that the website it’seeze builds for you will boost your business and
stimulate business growth.
Contact us today to find out how our professional and affordable web design services can help you.
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