The importance of protecting our environment has become ever greater and many businesses are looking at ways to operate a little greener and have a carbon neutral goal to work towards. Websites are a large contributor to the world’s carbon emissions. Estimated to be around 3.5% of all Global emissions. That’s similar to the amount produced by the global airline industry. Reducing their carbon footprint can help make a significant difference in the fight against climate change.
At Limelight we are doing our best to ensure the work we do impacts the environment as little as possible. If you host your website with Limelight it will be hosted green and pass sustainability. This means our web hosting runs on 100% renewable energy. Autoscaling technology is used to ensure that when a website becomes busy, it can draw resources from multiple servers. Your website isn’t bound to a single server as in many cases. This also works in reverse. If a website is no longer busy, it will take up fewer resources, meaning less electricity used and a reduction in harmful emissions.
So as a business owner what can you do to make your page as optimized as possible?
We’ve outlined a few changes below that will have a positive impact on our planet and let you keep up to date with the latest trends in website design.
1. Image optimization.
Uncompressed images can slow down your website and as a result have a bigger impact on the planet. You can use online tools to reduce your images in size, or optimize them for the web by reducing their file size and resolution. Not only will this make your website load faster, but it will reduce the overall impact.
2. Delete unwanted content.
Have a spring clean of your content, have you got images hanging around that are no longer relevant or content you are not using? All this content takes up space on your server, so it pays to keep everything as tidy as possible.
3. Use Video carefully.
Think carefully if your website user is going to benefit from the video content, don’t overload your website with videos on every page just for the sake of it. When you do need to add a video you can do a couple of things to minimize the impact like embedding it instead of uploading to the server, enable lazy loading for videos and compress any video content.
4. Create a good user experience.
An easy to navigate website is good for customers and helps reduce the time taken to find information. Clear menus prevent your clients clicking on content that’s not relevant, the more pages the user goes to the bigger the carbon footprint. Good user experience will not only keep customers coming back but also reduces the energy used by the site.
5. Minimalistic Design.
Not only does this help with number 4 but by not overloading your website with images, videos or pop ups you will have a lower carbon footprint.
6. Switch to Green Hosting.
Reduce your carbon footprint, improve your reputation, and support renewable energy growth.
Not only is going green a great selling point for your business but it will mean that you will have a smooth running, easy to navigate site that users will enjoy using.
Get in touch if green hosting and web design is something you think your business can benefit from. Limelight can help, drop us an email at sales@limelight.co.uk