How to make an eco-friendly website

If you’re an eco-conscious business owner, you may be thinking about how to make an eco-friendly website for your organisation. Whether you have an existing website that needs a revamp, or an entirely new site, there are many things you can do to make it more eco-friendly. The article will discuss several ways to make a website greener, such as improving the speed by reducing images and videos, targeting the right audience through SEO, and choosing green suppliers for hosting and website design. I also recommend offsetting the carbon footprint of your business as an extra measure. Read on to learn about it all in more detail.

Making An Eco-Friendly Website

If you’d like to start your journey to a greener and more eco-friendly website, then I would highly recommend the Website Carbon Calculator. This amazing tool from Wholegrain Digital allows you to review how green or not your website is. Discovering this tool set about my own action to make Middleton Marketing a more eco-friendly website after finding out, it scored very poorly indeed. You can read all about my eco-friendly website improvements in the case study, but the below areas are some of the aspects I focused on.

Improve the Speed

Probably the number one piece of advice for making a website more eco-friendly is improving the speed. When you make your website’s content show to your audience as quickly as possible, you reduce the energy used by your hosting servers and the energy used by the user and their computer. A quicker website saves energy, and this is vitally important for all in reducing carbon emissions, where every kilowatt is precious. There are several ways to improve the speed of a site, including;

• Reduce the use of images and videos. For any visuals, ensure they are properly sized, use next-generation formats and are lazy loaded on the screen.
• Remove unnecessary animation, design elements and plugins. The simpler a website, the quicker it will be, so reduce the bloat.
• Keep your site up to date. Vitally important for security, an up-to-date site will move at a quicker pace. Older technology and code can become bloated or no longer work, creating a drag on your loading times.

Not only will quick web speed make a more eco-friendly website, but you’ll also have better SEO as speed is a ranking factor, better engagement as people like fast sites, and a safer website as an up-to-date site is always the most secure.

Sell to the Right People.

If you want to make your website environmentally friendly, then you need to consider it first from your core business practices. One of the biggest issues we face in tackling the climate crisis is the massive overconsumption of products in the West. Fashion, food and technology are some of the biggest direct-to-consumer polluters, so if you sell these products, you need to consider whether you are promoting over-consumption. If this is the case, then you can make your website better in a number of ways.

• Not employing unethical marketing practices, such as charm pricing and false scarcity, to get people to buy quickly without thinking.
• Provide as much information about your products and services so users can make an informed choice about what they are buying.
• Be transparent about your ethics and limitations. Ethical consumers want to be informed so they can make the right ethical choice for them.

Another big way to do your bit is to use SEO to ensure that only the right people come to your website. This will reduce energy usage coming from the user, who will only be directed to your site because your SEO strategy has paid off and you are attracting only your target audience. SEO is a surprisingly eco-friendly marketing practice.

Choose Green Suppliers

Of course, another vital part of a green website is the suppliers that make it happen. A website is made up of several different areas, and each generates energy, uses resources and has an ethical impact. Here are some parts of your site build to consider.

• Where will your website be hosted? Is it a green provider like eco hosting? By choosing a green web hosting provider, you’ll be making a massive impact on energy usage and where is comes from as most use renewable energy.
• Is your website designer eco-conscious, thinking about the environmental impact of their design? Is your website developer an efficient code with a passion for speed? Does everyone you employ have the same passion for the earth in their business practices as their sales pitch?
• Are the types of technology you are using for your website have good green credentials? Check out ethical.net for a list of ethical tech alternatives.

Offset what you do make.

Lastly, if you’ve done all the above but you still want to do more, then you can look into carbon offsetting. While there are proponents and sceptics of carbon offsetting, these projects could help clean up the last of your website’s energy usage. I have my own carbon emissions offset with Ecologi. So far, I am very pleased with the service and their transparency. If you want to make an eco-friendly website, then this is the last step in making a green internet for us all.

Choose an Eco-friendly Website Designer

Choose Middleton Marketing for your next eco-friendly website project. I offer a whole range of website services, from full eco-friendly rebuilds to technical speed improvements. If you need help, get in touch today. I love working with other organisations, passionate about the planet.