We often hear about sustainable clothing, food, and other material goods, but have you ever considered whether the web faces similar sustainability challenges? It does. The internet relies on vast data centres and servers, which consume large amounts of electricity to operate and water to stay cool. Designing your website with sustainability in mind is one way to reduce its environmental impact.
In this article, our web design experts explore everything you need to know about sustainable web design and share practical ways to make your website more eco-friendly. Not only can these strategies support eco-friendly web design efforts, but they can also enhance your site’s performance.
What is Sustainable Web Design?
Sustainable web design is an approach to designing websites that prioritises environmental conservation principles. Decisions on what design aspects to include when designing a website will question whether the design element discussed will help optimise the website to use less energy.
Why is Sustainable Web Design Important?
Sustainable web design is important as it can help to reduce the environmental impact of websites. Hosting and browsing websites have associated carbon emissions due to the data centres that use large amounts of electricity to power servers and networks. Cooling systems are also required to cool down the data centres, which can use a vast amount of water.
7 Ways to Make Your Website More Sustainable
Luckily, there are several things we can do to mitigate the environmental impact of websites:
- Optimise website performance
Optimising website performance can help to improve the sustainability of your website. Websites with faster loading speeds require less energy to operate.
Page loading times can be improved with techniques like compression and caching, while minimising HTTP requests and adopting efficient coding practices can further enhance website performance. These optimisations not only improve user experience but also reduce energy consumption.
- Implement efficient code and design
Implementing efficient code and design can help improve website sustainability by boosting page loading times.
Every line of code consumes energy. Avoiding bloating code and using lightweight frameworks can help to reduce energy consumption.
Optimising images and videos can help to significantly reduce the amount of data needed to load a webpage. This means less energy is used both on the server hosting the website as well as on the user’s device.
- Reduce unnecessary energy consumption: implement dark mode
Providing users with an option to use dark mode can help to conserve energy. Dark mode uses less energy than a white background. According to a Purdue University study, when using auto-brightness, the energy saving for dark mode is between 3 and 9%.
- Implement lazy loading
Implementing lazy loading for images and videos means these will not load until the user scrolls down. This helps to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred initially and avoids unnecessary loading.
- Use green web hosting
When selecting a web hosting provider, consider whether the hosting provider uses renewable energy sources or has carbon offset programmes. Some web hosting services offer options like carbon offset, solar powered, or hydro geothermal powered shared web hosting.
- Implement sustainable SEO
Optimising for search engines by building the most relevant pages and getting users answers to questions quicker can help to reduce redundant browsing. This is important to help sustainability efforts because according to Salience, every Google search causes 0.11g of carbon emissions. AI use can also be problematic from a carbon emissions perspective. According to smartly.ai, each message sent to ChatGPT produces 4.32g of carbon dioxide, so optimising your content to deliver answers to users’ queries in a more carbon-friendly way can help to improve web sustainability.
Focusing your content strategy on high-quality, evergreen content can also help to minimise any unnecessary web traffic.
- Enhance accessibility and user experience
Enhancing accessibility and user experience helps make sure your website is usable, easy to navigate and readable for all users. This helps to minimise the time users spend looking for information, helping to reduce unnecessary page loading. This in turn can help your business’ website’s sustainability efforts while also improving conversion rates. Pages that load faster tend to have higher conversion rates. A study by Portent found that an e-commerce site that loads in 1 second has a conversion rate 2.5x higher than a site that loads in 5 seconds.
Sustainable Web Design Examples
Ecosia
- Ecosia is a search engine that plants trees using its profits
- It’s a carbon negative search engine that uses 200% renewable energy
Fairtrade
- The Fairtrade website is powered by renewable energy, which is certified by The Green Web Foundation
- Efficient loading speeds and accessible design features help to reduce energy consumption
Good Energy
- Good energy uses 0.19f of CO2 per view, which is cleaner than 82% of websites tested, according to Website Carbon
The Spectacle Factory
- Allows users to toggle between dark mode ‘in-store’ and light mode ‘virtual’ options
eBay UK
- eBay UK allows website visitors to implement dark mode
- To turn on dark mode, website visitors can go to My Settings > Preferences > Display > tick “Turn on Dark Mode”
Sustainable Web Design FAQs
Practical steps to take to make your website more sustainable include optimising web performance, implementing efficient code, using options like dark mode, using green web hosting and reducing redundant browsing by prioritising SEO.
Through using tactics like clear, simple navigation, and prioritising mobile-friendliness, user-experience can be improved by helping users access the information they need in an easy-to-view format on their device.
For an overview of the current carbon output of your website each time it loads, check out tools like Ecograder, Digital Beacon or the Green Web Foundation for insights.
Sustainable web design practices such as optimising website content and using energy-efficient coding practices can minimise the amount of energy needed to load and operate a website, in turn reducing carbon emissions.
The key principles of the Sustainable Web Manifesto include making the web ‘Clean’ by being powered by renewable energy, ‘Efficient’ by providing services using the least amount of energy possible, ‘Open’ by providing accessible products and services and allowing users to control their data, ‘Honest’ by providing products and services that do not mislead or exploit users in their design or content, ‘Regenerative’ by providing products and services that support an economy that nourishes people and planet and ‘Resilient’ by providing products and services that function in times and places where people need them most.
Partner with Sustainable Web Design Experts
Yellowball is a boutique web design agency in London. We have worked on 150+ web design projects with businesses large and small, creating bespoke websites that shine online. Let our team show you what your online presence can do. Contact us today.
Read more: Guide to website redesign
