Karellas is encouraged that it’s easy to take the first steps, and that any tweaks are unlikely to affect her business. “I’m sure it won’t cost a sale just because I change things around a bit,” she says.
Tim Frick is the founder of Mightybytes, which designs and builds websites. As well as driving down file sizes, he recommends streamlining the user journey through the site.
“It’s easy to calculate emissions based on data transfer,” he says. “It’s less easy to calculate emissions based on things that cause a user to spend more time, i.e. more energy, on interacting with the page. Some pages get millions of views every day. That tiny frustrating thing that takes each user an additional 10 seconds ends up amplified.”
Product design studio Quarterre worked with agency Future Selves to cut its website carbon emissions by 96%. They went from nearly 7g of carbon to 0.3g per homepage visit.
“There’s a danger when you talk about 7g that you think that’s not that much, but there’s a cumulative effect to that,” says Clive Hartley, director at Quarterre. “You want as many people as possible to be looking at your website and to come to your business. A more than 90% reduction in energy anywhere else would have people partying in the streets.”
They rebuilt the website with a small number of simple pages. Rather than using large hero images, the new site uses smaller images, arranged to create a composite design.
Coloured stripes define the site’s identity. They are created with text instructions and reduce the need for bulky image files.
Behind the scenes, animation and interaction effects were added using HTML and CSS, two fundamental web languages. That meant there was no need to download large JavaScript files often used to do this on other sites.
Although Quarterre works in a highly visual industry, Hartley didn’t experience any compromise in the site design. “We didn’t feel we were missing out on anything,” he says. “The simple graphics and the clean corporate imagery for the studio were satisfying. It looks punchy and vibrant.”
As well as rethinking images, user journeys and site structure, website owners can ask themselves whether any visits can be avoided altogether.
