Rick Madigan, Lead Technology Strategist, explores the latest advancements in sustainable web design and development and uncovers how companies can reduce their digital carbon footprint, contributing to a greener, more efficient internet.

If we gathered all the internet resources together and viewed it as a country, it would be the fourth largest polluter in the world. Digital has a large sustainability problem. Yet, if we view the carbon footprint of digital at a company level, it is a relatively small percentage which has pushed many organisations and companies to deprioritise it.

The Sustainable Web Manifesto, and the ensuing practices of sustainable web design and development, has tried to galvanise people into action, bringing organisations and companies together to make a difference.

The key is in realising that sustainable web design and development is more than just making greener sites. It’s about building more effective sites and achieving a greater ROI.  Let’s take it back to core principles. Sustainable Web Design and Development is underpinned by three core areas:

- Design and content
- Development
- Hosting

The idea is that if your site is easy to find (your SEO and content), easy to navigate (your UX and design) and loads quickly (Development and Hosting), then a site visitor uses less energy. Flipping that, all these things are the makings of a strong customer experience as users want to be able to do things quickly, simply and reliably.

We can break this down further. With SEO and content, optimised SEO and a carefully constructed content strategy, you can quickly increase your visibility and get people to information they need faster, thereby using less energy. But also, you are attracting more, higher-quality users to your site and into your funnel.

Design is a more complex proposition. Optimised UX (accessibility, navigation, search and beyond) not only boosts conversion rates but uses less energy. The tricky part comes with creative design. Low-carbon sites (Volkswagen ID4 site, Organic Basics) are not for everyone. There’s brand to consider. We want to showcase brand in the best light, but at the same time we need to be pragmatic and focus on what is important to the user – where do we really need images, image formats, video resolution, standard fonts over custom fonts?

We know that we can’t all go low carbon, but we can at least reduce the intensity and, as a by-product, reduce the load and boost the performance, a key part of user experience.

Which leads into Development. Clean sites run faster. Modern frameworks, web standards, reusable code, smart tracking (what data you actually need), optimised tag management and more are all considerations in building clean sites which in turn gives us those important performance figures.

We shouldn’t forget our own employees as well. They are users too. If they can do what they need to do faster in the CMS or other, they not only use less energy, but we get business efficiency.

And finally, Hosting. Two examples of hosting that we use are - Azure (via Rackspace) and Vercel (which leverages the AWS edge network). There are many things to consider in hosting – from the resources you are using to the distance of the data centres from the core user base and the energy effectiveness of the vendor. It’s thinking beyond somewhere to put a website and understanding what the vendor can offer. In both of our examples, we have vendors who operate the latest approaches and, as a result, are able to deliver lower carbon scores.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

To sum up, sustainability in digital is not a tick in a box or a “nice to have”. It’s fundamental to delivering exceptional user experiences and higher conversions. It’s this realisation which will lead to increased sustainable practices in 2023.