How to design a sustainable website
It might seem insignificant, but every time you send an email, conduct an internet search or browse a website, you’re using energy and emitting greenhouse gases. When you multiply this by the roughly 4 billion people on the planet who do this too, you get to a carbon footprint for the internet that is comparable with that of the airline industry.
And this is only going to get worse, as the number of people accessing the internet grows and their usage gets more energy-intensive (faster download speeds mean streaming films and high-resolution imagery are more and more accessible). Some predict that by 2040 internet-connected devices will produce 14% of global carbon emissions.
What can we do about it?
There are lots of ways you can reduce your website’s carbon footprint, but fundamentally it can be broken down into 3 key areas.
1. Green hosting in the right location
Servers/data centres and their cooling systems require huge amounts of energy to operate. Most green hosting providers offset their carbon emissions by investing in the same amount (or more) of renewable energy. However, there are some that claim to use 100% renewable energy.
The location of your servers matters too. The further data has to travel, the more energy is used. If the target audience is in the UK, use a UK based host.
Therefore finding a host that uses 100% renewable energy in the same geographical area as your users will make a big difference to your website’s sustainability credentials.
The Green Web Foundation have a list of hosts that provide proof of their green claims.
2. Travel light
The size of a webpage is determined by the size of the files it needs to load. High-resolution images and videos can help make a website look great, but they’re also one of the biggest contributors to load time and therefore energy consumption.
Only use images you need, and when you use them make sure they are optimised to the minimum size possible without losing quality. Use Jpegs rather than PNGs as they are more compressed, or better still use WebP formatted images which can be between 25-35% smaller than Jpegs.
In recent years the use of video has exploded, primarily due to its effectiveness at capturing people’s attention. But they are very costly in terms of energy consumption. If you have to use video on your website do not set it to autoplay, optimise it and embed it directly on your site (embedding it on external sites require greater processing power).
Alternatively use animated gifs to capture attention and tell a story. These can be created at a fraction of the size of most video content.
3. Keep it simple
This principle should be applied to your content strategy and the way you build your website.
Content:
Create user journeys that tell the story you want to tell in the simplest way possible. Having a large and convoluted website will not only annoy your users but will also force them to spend more time on your website than they need to, consuming more energy.
Write copy that is clear, concise and to the point and your audience will get what they came for without wasting time and energy.
Build:
It can be tempting to throw the kitchen sink at a website to try to make it as slick as possible, using Javascript to produce effects. However, all that code chews up energy. So keep the code simple and efficient.
Using tracking and analytics scripts also adds code to your site which consistently consumes data. If tracking is necessary it is possible to find low carbon footprint analytics services which only add 1kb to the final code.
In summary
Light, well-thought-through websites can be easily indexed by search engines, cutting down the power needed to properly crawl the site, and helping users find the information they need as quickly as possible. So not only does it work from a sustainability perspective, but it also helps with SEO.
If you have any questions, or if you would like to discuss how we can help create a sustainable website for your organisation, you can get in touch here.