It’s easy to think of the internet as this ethereal, intangible thing. But the harsh truth is that it has a very real footprint on the planet. All those cat videos and online shopping sprees require energy—a lot of it—to power data centers, networks, and our own devices.
Of course, that includes your website, too. According to WRAL, websites significantly contribute to greenhouse gases. Every page load, image, and video stream adds up, making the internet a surprisingly large source of carbon emissions.
You can make a difference, though. Adopting sustainable web design practices can help you shrink your website’s carbon footprint and make it run faster and smoother.
Ready to create a greener, more efficient website? Here are a few sustainable design practices that can help you save the planet.
Optimize Images and Videos
Isn’t it frustrating when a site takes forever to load? That sure is an inconvenience.
Often, the culprits are large, unoptimized image and video files. According to The Teen Magazine, these heavy files take longer to download. Therefore, they consume more energy.
Every time a device downloads a large image or video, it uses a bit of power. Multiply that by the billions of web pages viewed daily and the energy consumption adds up.
On top of that, the servers hosting these websites have to work harder to deliver these large files. That further increases energy usage on their end.
Lighten the load by compressing images. Tools like Squoosh.app can shrink image sizes without ruining quality.
When saving images, choose the right file format. WebP is a modern format that offers excellent compression and quality and is supported by most browsers. Implement lazy loading, so images load only when they are about to become visible on the user’s screen as they scroll.
Use Sustainable Colors
Believe it or not, the colors you choose for your website can actually impact energy consumption. This is especially true for devices with newer OLED screens found in many smartphones and laptops. Why so?
On these types of screens, darker colors require less energy to display because the individual pixels emit their own light. The pixels essentially turn off, reducing energy consumption further.
Contrastingly, brighter colors, like white, require all pixels to be fully illuminated. So, they use significantly more power. Oddly, blue pixels tend to consume more energy than red or green pixels.
A completely black website is the most energy-efficient on an OLED screen, but it’s not always user-friendly. Reading light text on a dark background can cause eye strain.
It’s important to strike a balance between accessibility and energy efficiency. Use darker, more muted color palettes for backgrounds and reserve brighter colors for accents. Instead of pure white (#FFFFFF), try off-whites or grays that are easier on the eyes and the battery.
Go Minimalist in Design
The more flashy graphics, heavy animations, and endless features you cram into a page, the more energy it takes to load.
Go minimalist. Cut unnecessary elements. Do you really need five pop-ups and an auto-playing video? Probably not.
Use simple layouts. Clean, straightforward designs not only look better, but also load faster and use less energy. DMNews says that the conversion rate of simple and clean websites is much higher.
Reduce custom scripts and animations. Fancy animations and JavaScript-heavy elements may look cool, but they can slow down your site and eat up extra power.
Don’t want to do the heavy lifting of revamping the design? AI-powered website builders can help you redesign your website.
According to Hocoos, website redesign is a process that involves modifying an existing site’s design, structure, content, and functionality.
An AI-powered website builder can streamline this process, helping you create a sleek, efficient site without the hassle of manual coding.
These tools can suggest optimized layouts, compress images, and eliminate unnecessary elements, all while keeping the design visually appealing. What’s more? Your redesigned site will be ready in as little as five minutes.
Discourage Infinite Scrolling
Infinite scrolling might create a seemingly seamless browsing experience. But it isn’t the most sustainable approach.
Endless scrolling, or infinite scrolling, can significantly increase data consumption. That is because users may unintentionally load and download a significant amount of content they don’t intend to view.
Of course, this constant fetching of data consumes more energy compared to a user actively choosing to navigate to the next page.
Sustainability aside, it makes it difficult for users to find specific items they saw earlier or to return to a particular point on the page. For this reason, Google dropped continuous scrolls in search results.
More sustainable and user-friendly alternatives to infinite scrolling include traditional pagination—breaking content into pages. Users can click ‘Next’ when they are ready, instead of being bombarded with never-ending content.
Adding a ‘load more’ button is another option. Users can explicitly choose when they want to load additional content.
Every Byte Counts
You don’t have to sacrifice design or functionality to make your website sustainable. A few smart changes can help you reduce your digital carbon footprint.
What’s great? These changes don’t just help the planet. They also improve site performance and user experience. So really, it’s a win-win.