Gareth Wheeler, Senior Digital Designer at The MTM Agency provides insight on sustainable web design, including why it’s important and how you can take steps towards improving your own site’s sustainability.
Many of the brands we work with at MTM have sustainability at the core of their mission. During our recent Think Tank event, the topic of sustainable website design and development was raised and it became one of the key talking points with attendees.
Questions around determining a website’s carbon emissions and how to reduce the environmental impact of a brand’s digital assets were amongst those raised. So, let’s quickly explore why sustainable website design is increasingly important, and share a few tips for how to improve your performance.
The carbon footprint of digital content
Chances are you’ve browsed social media, read an online blog, streamed music or downloaded a video today. Each of these actions emit a few grams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere because of the energy used to power your devices, and more importantly, the energy used to power the vast data centres used to store and deliver the content we access everyday.
Data centres are the internet’s backbone. These labyrinths of circuit boards – tirelessly storing our collective digital lives – require huge, sophisticated cooling systems to keep the hardware functioning. This is just one of the ways data centres devour electricity, not to mention the hardware manufacturing impact, building construction and sheer square meterage of land involved.
In spite of the internet’s omnipresence in our lives, its true environmental impact has only recently been seriously researched. For example, Moz’s Internet Health Report claimed in 2018 that communications tech will emit more carbon than any country except China, India, and the U.S by 2025, so it’s safe to say that the topic will be growing in significance in the coming years as we all look to tackle our carbon footprint .
What is website sustainability?
As I just mentioned, just like all forms of digital activity, websites have an environmental impact. The way a website is created, stored and interacted with directly corresponds to the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result.
Website sustainability is the practice of understanding those emissions and designing websites and digital applications with the goal of minimising their impact on the planet.
Who is leading the change?
Many brands are embracing sustainable web design. Outdoors clothing retailer Patagonia stands out by excelling in both product and digital sustainability through efficient coding, reduced data transfers, and renewable energy hosting. Sustainability-focused phone case manufacturer Pela Case powers its site with renewable energy and uses tools to measure and offset its carbon footprint, while leading global environmental charity WWF UK employs resource-efficient technologies and green hosting to minimise data transfer and CPU usage, thereby reducing its environmental impact.
Tech giants like Apple, Google, and Salesforce have pledged to power their data centres with 100% renewable energy. Businesses can follow their lead by choosing eco-friendly web design and hosting solutions, effectively reducing carbon footprints and promoting environmental responsibility.
These brands highlight the positive impact of sustainable web practices and their commitment to a greener future.
Why do I need a sustainable website?
There is one obvious benefit of a sustainable website. But what might be less obvious is the plethora of benefits for your marketing infrastructure. Here are a few of these benefits:
1. Helps your SEO
Sustainability practices are heavily reliant on the same skill set used for maintaining healthy, high-ranking, search-optimised websites. Quick loading speeds, clear and relevant content, and intuitive navigation are key aspects of SEO, not only helping your website rank higher while using less energy, but also keeping your interested users engaged and more likely to convert.
2. Provides an opportunity for ESG communications
With increased concerns over the state of our environment, ESG comms and being transparent about your business’ practices has become essential. Maintaining a sustainable website not only allows you to positively contribute towards the environment, it gives you an opportunity to talk about what you are doing, simultaneously staying on top of marketing trends.
3. It is cost-efficient
An optimised website generally uses less resources. Not only are you reducing your website’s energy consumption, you are also minimising the costs of large data-transfers; a simple, effective design often requires less maintenance or updates which saves your devs time; hosting becomes less resource intensive, reducing server load and subsequently energy bills. Overall, it allows you to cut some of the costs of running a large, expensive website and keeps your business happy and healthy.
How can I make my website more sustainable?
There are many ways to implement eco-friendly web design. The main question you should be asking is: how can you ensure that your website takes up the least amount of energy to build, use and store? Below I’ve compiled our top three tips to make an immediate impact:
1. Switch to green hosting
You can cut down significantly on your websites’ energy consumption by changing the way it is hosted. There are renewable energy-powered data centre options available which are significantly more sustainable than non-renewable powered alternatives. Switching to a local hosting provider can also be beneficial as it cuts down on the energy it takes to transfer your website data over longer distances, but it is not without its drawbacks if you have a national or global audience.
2. Reduce image sizes and video content
By checking that your website’s assets are sized correctly and properly optimised, loading speeds will improve and less energy will be used. This is also beneficial for your users’ experience by enhancing performance.
Video content is the biggest drain on a website’s energy use. If video content is necessary, you can reduce its impact by using a third party video host such as Vimeo or YouTube which will compress and optimise your video for whatever device it is being viewed on each time.
3. Have a content clear-out
Your Content Management System (CMS) will hold on to all media you upload even if it is not currently being used in your website. It is also worth looking at older pages that are no longer relevant, provide traffic or value. These will be using energy to store in a data centre, so by making sure the content you store is always useful and streamlined, you are reducing energy wastage.
4. Use efficient coding
Streamlining code and reducing the number of HTTP requests (e.g., by combining CSS or JavaScript files) reduces the load on servers and speeds up the website, decreasing energy consumption.
5. Caching and CDN Usage
Implementing caching strategies stores frequently used data locally, reducing the need to reload everything from the server. Similarly, using content delivery networks (CDNs) ensures data is served from locations closer to users, reducing the energy needed for data.
6. Implement sustainable User Experience (UX)
Making websites faster and more intuitive reduces the time users spend navigating, which also cuts energy use. This includes making the website accessible and mobile-first, which is less resource-intensive.
How can The MTM Agency help?
Wondering how your website stacks up? Get in contact with the team at The MTM Agency today for a free website sustainability audit, including actionable solutions to reduce your website’s energy usage.