According to ENDS Report – conducting an in-depth analysis of environmental data, including public realm, green behaviour, air quality, and climate quality – Oxford is officially England’s greenest city, ranking top of the country’s 55 largest urban centres.
With the world pushing to be more sustainable, this is a big achievement that should be celebrated, and a good way to do that is through your website design!
We know what you’re thinking: how exactly do you build a green website? But the truth is, there are so many ways to make your website more eco-friendly, whether that’s by optimising its performance, or simply minimising its design.
Here at XIST2, we offer web design services in Oxford that are optimised to suit your company and your goals, so if being eco-friendly is one of them – and it should be – we’ve got a load of ideas that you can implement.
Optimising Your Website Performance
Loading and serving web pages uses energy, and energy consumption directly impacts the environment by contributing to carbon emissions. One good way to make a green website, then, is to minimise the amount of energy your website needs.
You can do this by reducing your file sizes. Images often make up a significant portion of a web page’s total data, but simply by compressing them, you can reduce their file size without noticeably impacting their quality.
Opting for newer image formats like WebP can also be beneficial. To give an example, JPEGs or PNGs often take up around 50% to 60% of the data required for a web page’s load, while WebP reduces that by 30% – and it does so without leading to any noticeable visual differences.
What’s more, ‘lazy loading’ can delay the loading of images and videos until they’re actually visible on screen, which not only minimises the amount of data loaded up front, but it speeds up the initial page load by reducing the server’s workload – which means you save energy and improve the user experience in the process.
Going Mobile-First
With mobile traffic now accounting for over 50% of global web traffic, prioritising mobile performance isn’t just a user-centric goal, but also an eco-friendly one. Compared to designing a full, browser web page, designing for a smaller layout naturally consumes less data and energy, with mobile devices generally loading pages with lower resolutions and streamlined elements.
As well as this, creating a design that scales up, rather than scales down, avoids the need for ‘heavy’ desktop-only features, which ultimately results in a lighter, faster website that reduces the server power and bandwidth needed to deliver the content.
When building a mobile-friendly website, we’d also recommend avoiding excessive animations and graphics. On mobile networks, especially, intricate graphics that require complex JavaScript and CSS code can slow down a site – increasing energy consumption while reducing the processing power available to display them. Animations can still be done, don’t get us wrong. But keep them simple, and avoid anything unnecessary.
Promoting Eco-Friendly Values
One last good way to build an eco-friendly website is to utilise and promote sustainable practices. Across your company, you can work on adopting numerous green operations that set you apart from competitors, and demonstrate your willingness to join the cause and help make the world a better place. This can then be highlighted on your website, showcasing your commitment through blogs, forums, or social sharing options that promote community and engagement.
When it comes to blogs, specifically, work on creating valuable evergreen content that will remain relevant over time. This will then reduce the need for frequent updates and rehosting, which subsequently minimises energy use and reduces the overall bounce rate.
In terms of the future, you can also utilise tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to assess your website’s performance and identify any areas for improvement. Regular monitoring like this can help you make far more informed decisions to reduce energy consumption, and make sure all your efforts for sustainability and efficiency are on track.
Conclusion
As mentioned before, Oxford has been named England’s greenest city, and it has been two years in a row now.
To do your part, these are just a few small ways to create a ‘green website’ and make sure your online presence aligns with the sustainability goals of the city you’re operating in. It’s also worth noting that these efforts will help your own business to grow.
In a recent survey, it was revealed that over 78% of consumers say that a sustainable lifestyle is important to them, and 62% are willing to change their purchasing habits to support more sustainable brands. With this in mind, your environmental efforts – and your efforts to communicate them – should not only support the planet, but support your business endeavours long into the future.
Contact us to discuss the build of your own green website now.
