Ask yourself these questions:
Is your site hosted with a sustainable hosting provider?
How many HTTP requests are hitting your website’s homepage every day?
Does your site use Flash at all?
Was your site designed with mobile in mind first?
What is your website’s Google Page Speed or findability score?
If you are not sure of the answers to any of these questions then you may find there is an opportunity to make your website better for the environment. Whilst the web is quite certainly more sustainable than other mediums, such as print, there is still much room for improvement and we can help show you how.
The most recent statistics show that more than 50 million computer servers worldwide contribute to 5% of the planet’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The ever growing number of websites and web applications are accounting for more and more of our total electricity consumption. It is worthwhile keeping these figures in mind when developing your new website or looking at maintaining your current one.
The most obvious point to take into consideration, and the one that will make the biggest impact, is whether or not you are being hosted by a sustainable hosting provider. These can be categorised as providers that are 100% powered by renewable energy such as wind or solar, or providers who purchase Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).
There are currently 14 “Certified Green” hosting providers in the United Kingdom as well as hundreds more worldwide. “Certified Green” refers to hosting companies that provide proof of their green claim online. A full list of these can be found over at The Green Web Foundation.
Other than making sure you are with a “Certified Green” provider, there are a few more fixes that can be implemented relatively easily. Be sure to check Google Page Speed over at Google Page Speed Insights and check your findability score over at MOZ and then follow the recommendations that both of these services provide. A really quick and easy activity that everyone should do is to head over to ecograder.com to see how you are currently grading. This very simple yet effective search can show you in a matter of seconds exactly where you can make improvements and how to go about making them.
We are happy to say that when we graded all of our most recent websites, including our own, that the average score was 78 out of 100. We are always looking to improve how we do things and we will continue to do so through practices such as this.
How did you do? Have a check and let us know. If you would like to know more, then feel free to give us a call on 01223 328017 or drop us an email at [email protected] for more details.