Sustainable web: why is it important and how to do it

Sustainable Web: why is it important and how to do it

When we talk about reducing the ecological impact on our planet, we usually associate it with the physical world: garbage, pollution from factories, transports, even livestock farms or intensive agriculture. But these are all challenges in the analogue world and we usually do not bear in mind that the virtual world also leaves a significant footprint.

Yes, some ethereal things, and of course the Internet, also leave a significant ecological footprint on our planet.

Even though we can’t touch them, our data is continuously traveling and being stored on large servers. To be maintained and function properly these megaservers need to be in proper temperature conditions, so keeping them that way involves considerable energy expenditure.

Talking about sustainable web design is not about advertising about recycling or marketing about taking care of the environment. It’s about creating a site with a consciousness of the carbon footprint that is created by the use of servers on the web.

 

Why is it important to have a sustainable website?

Just as we refer to a vehicle’s energy use in terms of litres per kilometre, we can think of web energy use in terms of downloaded data. This, partly, gives us a framework for calculating the relationship between the size of a website and its carbon footprint.

 

How to create a sustainable website??

Therefore, we want to give you some advice that you can apply to your existing website or if you are going to create one. Although they may seem like little things, the accumulation of small improvements produces important changes with a lot of significance.

Use of lazy loading

Thanks to lazy loading, when we are browsing only the images and other elements will be loaded when necessary, in other words, when we enter a website only the top half of the page will be seen instantly, but the rest will only be opened if we scroll down.

This makes the power consumption decrease, since a full page will not be constantly loaded (if we are not going to see the whole page). In addition, our navigation will be much faster, which makes us spend less data.

Optimizing images

We are not saying that the quality of the images on a website is reduced, as we know how important they are for brand recognition. However, very high resolution images increase loading times considerably, and with it the power consumption of our equipment.

There are different image formats, which, if used correctly, will give you quality images with little weight. In addition, we can also use other tools to compress the size of these files without decreasing their properties.

Video Insertion

This is one of the aspects that most affect the performance and efficiency of our website. But we cannot stop using them, since it is a resource that gives us a lot.

However, we can minimize the impact on energy consumption of loading and viewing videos. The first thing is not to use high resolution videos when it is not strictly necessary. Neither should we make the videos play automatically, and that is something that users who enter from a mobile phone using their data will appreciate.

Also, if the video is already uploaded to a specific platform, such as YouTube or Vimeo, do not upload them again to your website, use embedded codes. This way you will save resources and space in your hosting.

Interaction Design

This moment is crucial when developing a website, as it is the ideal time to identify and define the characteristics and elements that can cause a negative impact on the ecological footprint. This includes, for example, carousel images which, although they provide a lot of dynamism, should be used sparingly, as they involve large images in addition to the JavaScript needed to make it move, and which usually add hundreds of kilobytes.

It is also time to reconsider the buttons, maps, advertising, videos… the web designer becomes a key ally in this sense to improve the footprint of our website.

Erase everything you’re not using

This may seem very trivial, but it’s something we tend to neglect. For example, we install plugins to test their functionality, and after a while we replace them with others and leave them there. Or we simply stop using them but don’t delete them entirely. And the same thing happens with WordPress templates. Not to mention images that we upload and perhaps belong to pages or entries that are already deleted.

All this is space that we are occupying and that is a burden for our website. It never hurts to spend some time cleaning up the digital garbage, checking what is really useful to us and what is no longer necessary.

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Perhaps all the advice and actions that we learn every day may seem insignificant, but if we combine and add them up we will improve not only our brand reputation, but also, and above all, our environment.

Because being green is no longer just about recycling objects, it’s also about how we turn our intangible actions into a way to help the planet.