Did you know that your website has an environmental impact? Every time someone visits your website, their browser requests information from your server, which consumes electricity. The same goes for the data centers that host your website and the devices that display it. All of this adds up to a significant carbon footprint that contributes to global warming.
You can check the carbon footprint of your site here: https://www.websitecarbon.com/
According to the Shift Project:
- digital technologies are responsible for roughly 4% of greenhouse gas emissions and
- their energy consumption is increasing by 9% a year.
That’s why it’s important for all of us to take steps to reduce your website’s carbon footprint and make it more sustainable. Here are some tips to help you do that:
- Reduce the size of your images and videos. For most websites, images and videos are the biggest contributors to page weight, which is the amount of data that needs to be transferred for a page to load. The larger the page weight, the more energy it consumes. To reduce page weight, you can optimize your images and videos by compressing them, resizing them, or using web-friendly formats. You can also use lazy loading techniques, which only load images and videos when they are visible on the screen. Savemi can help you by:
- Using tools to decrease the size of your images
- Serve your videos off Youtube or Vimeo rather than your own host
- Convert your images to WebP – which are quicker to load
- Add lazy loading to your site
- Add a WordPress plugin called Smush
- Get rid of unnecessary code. Another way to reduce page weight is to eliminate any code that is not essential for your website’s functionality or appearance. This includes large blocks of commented-out code, unused libraries or plugins, or duplicate code. You can also minify your code, which removes any whitespace or comments that are not needed for execution. This will make your code more compact and faster to load. In WordPress terms:
- Find a more efficient and faster loading theme
- Regularly check for updates on themes and plugins
- Deactivate and delete unused plugins
- Install a tool to minify and speed up your site such as Hummingbird.
- Choose efficient programming languages. Not all programming languages are equally efficient when it comes to energy consumption. Some languages require more processing power or memory than others, which means they use more electricity. In WordPress terms, minimise the use of Javascript. When you have to use it, minify it – the same as above
- Run computations on the server side. Data centers are more efficient than end-user devices when it comes to performing complex calculations or operations. That’s because they have better hardware, cooling systems, and power management. Therefore, whenever possible, you should run computations on the server side rather than on the client side (i.e., in the browser). This will reduce the energy consumption of your website’s visitors and improve their user experience.
- Another way to do this is use a Content Delivery Network such as Cloudflare. Be careful with adding your site to a CDN as it can cause unexpected bugs such as email non-delivery (we know from our own mistakes.)
- Create a culture of efficiency. Finally, one of the most effective ways to reduce your website’s carbon footprint is to create a culture of efficiency within your organization or team. This means making sustainability a priority and a value in your web design and development process. You can do this by setting goals and metrics for your website’s performance and environmental impact, educating yourself and others about web sustainability best practices, and using tools that help you measure and improve your website’s carbon footprint.
- Choose a green host. A great way to lower the environmental impact of your website is to use a “green” hosting provider. These are companies that use renewable energy sources, such as wind or solar power, to run their servers. They also implement energy-efficient practices, such as cooling their servers with natural air or water.
By following these tips, you can make your website more eco-friendly and reduce its contribution to climate change. Not only will this benefit the environment, but it will also benefit your business by improving your website’s speed, usability, accessibility, and SEO ranking.
So what are you waiting for? Start greening your website today!
