Putting sustainability at the heart of your website strategy

Sustainability is an ever-increasing concern in the wider public consciousness.

But by-and-large, consumers are increasingly sceptical of a brands’ sustainability claims.

The reality therefore, is that credibility is key.

As such, it’s important for businesses to address sustainability in all aspects of their organisation, including their website strategy.

In a recent study by BCG, 57% of consumers say their perception of a brand is influenced by its sustainability practices.

So being transparent around your organisation’s climate goals and sustainability pledge is integral to promoting trust and loyalty with your customers.

In this blog post, we identify the areas of focus for achieving digital sustainability with your website technology.

The current state of digital’s impact on the environment

It’s very easy to discredit the impact that digital technology has on the environment.

Afterall, it’s a virtual concept which is considered intangible to many.

But it isn’t.

Each time somebody visits a single web-page, this emits at least 20 milligrams of CO2 per second.

And with approximately 3.5 billion web users worldwide, this equates to 2-3% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

But it’s not all doom and gloom – because you can be both digital and green at the same time!

So how can you create an energy efficient website?

Your typical website is made up of many different files.

These include code files, such as HTML, Javascript, CSS as well as images, video and font files.

And when a user accesses your website, these files are downloaded from the server.

So taking into consideration that the average web page size for desktop is 2.2MB and mobile 2MB, you can imagine the sheer volume of data that the average user is generating each day browsing the web.

So what are the key areas to address to create more sustainable, energy-efficient websites?

Size matters, optimise those images!

Whilst high-resolution images look great on your website, they are often one of the biggest factors affecting load times and your website’s energy consumption.

So the key is to be selective.

If the image doesn’t serve a purpose to complement website content or narrative, is it really needed? Or is it there purely for aesthetic purposes?

For those images that absolutely have to be there, utilise an image compression tool.

We use the Imagify plugin on our WordPress websites, but there are many other free tools available such as TinyPNG.

According to Google, 25% of web pages could save more than 250KB and 10% can save more than 1MB by compressing images and text.

Video is a great marketing tool, but get strategic with it

A recent study by Wyzowl found that 91% of businesses are using video as a marketing tool in 2023.

Not surprising, given that the largest demographic of today’s website users (the Millennial and Gen Z audience) are big consumers of video content, with 14.9% of millennials surveyed by Statista watching an average of 10-20 hours of video per week!

But like images, video can have a huge effect on the performance and efficiency of a website.

We always advise clients that best practice is to serve website videos on the site via a platform like Youtube or Vimeo.

Why?

This is for two key reasons.

1. You’re not using the bandwidth of your website because the video is being streamed via the respective platforms’ data centres.
2. Each platform will have their own commitments to advancing sustainability e.g. every Youtube video streamed has a zero carbon footprint.

If however you absolutely need to serve the video via your own website CMS, here are a few things to consider:

• Is this video absolutely necessary?
• Can I lower the video resolution slightly, without negatively impacting the video quality?
• Does the video have to autoplay, or can I allow my users to decide whether to stream the video or not by clicking the play button?

Being mindful of these points will reduce the size of your site and subsequently the amount of data generated by users visiting your website.

Consider using web caching.

A web cache is essentially the act of storing a copy of your website files in a temporary storage location for reuse.

So for a user who is revisiting your website, they are retrieving the data they’ve already downloaded from the cache, rather than having to query the web server again/

Less data is more sustainable and will improve your website load times, which will benefit your users and SEO.

Is it time for a spring clean?

During your website’s lifetime you’ll accumulate many different assets that will contribute to your website’s file size.

So periodically carry out a spring clean of your website and delete anything that isn’t being used.

This can apply to images, videos, plugins, post revisions, drafts, unpublished pages etc, the more streamlined your website, the less energy it uses and as a result the lower its carbon footprint.

But it’s not just assets that need to be considered.

A regular housekeeping of the website code is also necessary.

Stripping out old, redundant code can also help your website developer identify opportunities where code can be made to be more efficient.

The result, better performance and a heightened level of sustainability.

Sometimes, being lazy pays-off

We’re of course referring to lazy-loading here.

Lazy-loading is the means of loading a web page’s images and other media content as and when it’s required.

In terms of user experience, there’s no detriment as everything ‘above the fold’ loads instantly when a user lands on the page.

If a user then decides to scroll, the rest of the webpage loads.

But if the user doesn’t scroll, you’re not generating data by loading unnecessary media.

Clear, succinct navigation is key

An easy to use, intuitive and succinct navigation and website hierarchy is integral to your website’s user experience.

This is because an unclear navigation is only going to confuse and annoy your users, and worst case scenario, cause them to exit your website with a bad impression of your brand or business.

And with 88% of online consumers less likely to return to a site after a bad experience, you’re in danger of losing that customer to a competitor.

In terms of the environmental aspect, if your navigation is unwieldy, it increases the amount of time a user will spend aimlessly clicking around your website to find the information that they require.

This is why it’s so important to understand your website’s audience and reflect these user journeys in navigation structure and website signposting.

Make it easy and both the environment and your users will thank you for it.

Choose a green web host

Whilst the data that you generate when accessing a website is somewhat intangible, consider the data centres that process this data.

With multiple high-powered servers generating energy and numerous cooling systems being used to prevent overheating – you can imagine the energy bill!

As such, there are many web hosting companies that are ‘going-green’ employing the use of renewable energy, like these UK based green-hosting companies that are aiding in the reduction of the environmental impact of the web.

And whilst there may be a stigma that green hosting is more expensive than its not so environmentally conscious counterpart, it really is very competitive.

Switch to energy saving mode

A growing trend in businesses’ quest to be more environmentally friendly is ‘energy saving mode’.

Utilised by the likes of Boohoo this involves a prominent toggle on the website, that when selected by the user changes the website experience.

Energy saving mode removes images where possible and dims the brightness of the screen for a lighter, faster and less energy consuming experience.

As a relatively new concept however, this isn’t as straightforward nor as accessible for a budget conscious website.

We expect that with its growing popularity some cost-effective ‘energy saving mode’ plugins will emerge making it an obtainable option in your digital website strategy.

Our takeaways

Adopting more sustainable practices with your website doesn’t have to be scary.

Implementing these easy changes can fundamentally affect the impact that your business’s website has on the environment.

And subsequently, by adopting these principles as a driving focus behind your website, will ensure that it is always up-to-date, technically competent and more easily maintained.

Additionally, as well as being more eco-friendly, these tweaks will have a discernible impact on your website’s performance, user experience and SEO optimisation.

We’d call that a win for both the environment and your website!