Did you know that using a website has an environmental impact? As a creative agency that builds websites and provides marketing, we understand the importance of reducing our carbon footprint.
That’s why we design our websites with the environment in mind. Our team is trained to make environmentally-friendly choices when building sites, so you can feel confident that your website will have minimal impact on the planet.
If you want to have an environmentally-friendly website, our team follows these steps in two phases:
Phase 1: Building the website
- Reducing file sizes: We optimize our file sizes by compressing them as much as possible. Do you really need those photos in super HD, or will it be okay to lose a few pixels for the sake of the planet? The reduced load time is also good for SEO and energy consumption.
- No auto-playing videos: Most things that are good for the environment are also good for SEO. A video having to load on your homepage severely damages your Google ranking as well as the environment. We highly advise against them.
- Lazy loading: Similar to not auto-playing a video (if you absolutely must have one), lazy loading only loads in images above the fold and as the user scrolls down. This saves energy consumption and helps your page load quicker, which is good for SEO.
- Setting up web caching: Web caching stores shared page elements, such as JavaScript, CSS, and images, closer to the user. When the user revisits your website, the data is retrieved from the cache location rather than querying the web server repeatedly. This is like digital recycling and helps reduce energy consumption.
- Housekeeping: Just like a good spring clean is good for a house, cleaning up your website is good for the environment. Make sure you delete old themes, plugins, post revisions, unused media, categories and tags, spam comments, and broken links. Keeping websites slim and streamlined means they won’t require as much energy to run.
- User-friendly site navigation: Both the planet and your users will appreciate this. The more your user has to click around to find something, the more time they waste on your site, consuming energy. This adds up quickly. By keeping the navigation user-friendly, your users can find what they need quickly and then leave.
Phase 2: Offsetting carbon emissions
In addition to building environmentally-friendly websites, we also offset the remaining carbon emissions through our partnership with Ecologi. We plant the equivalent amount of trees to create a carbon-neutral site and put a bit more green back into the planet.
See how many trees have been planted so far.
Committing to energy efficiency and eco-friendly web design has numerous advantages and benefits for your business. It not only builds up your sustainability credentials, but it also helps drive the global movement for change.
At Brace, we are dedicated to being a climate-positive workforce and hope you’ll join us on this journey. If you’re interested in making a positive impact with your new website, contact our team at hello@brace.co.uk.
