Thanks to increasing awareness of environmental issues, more and more people have endeavoured to ‘go green’ — with over eight out of ten adults in Great Britain having recently reported making eco-friendly changes to their lifestyles.
As a business owner, you might not have realised that you can even do your bit for the planet by overhauling your corporate website. Here are five examples of things you can do to make your website more sustainable without compromising its appeal and functionality…
Use images sparingly
You might have previously used them abundantly out of fear that the website would otherwise look staid and boring. However, you have to remember that the larger the amount of data tied into an image, the higher the amount of carbon dioxide it will inevitably generate when loaded.
So, it would be good practice for you to only include images that genuinely enhance the user experience. For example, if you have inserted particular images just to break up large chunks of text, why not ask our SEO copywriters to make those paragraphs less off-putting?
Make leftover images more efficient to load
You could do this simply by shrinking them, but what if doing so would leave the website too unsightly? One possible alternative strategy is to save the pictures in a less data-heavy format.
In this spirit, make sure you routinely choose the .jpg format for photos. Meanwhile, our graphic designers could not only provide your website with graphics and icons but also hand you those images as, respectively, .png and .svg files.
Don’t go overboard with video
Your brand might have its own YouTube channel filled with eye-catching videos, but this dynamic content is a data hog.
Whatever a particular video currently embedded into your website does say, you could find yourself able to say much the same thing with some bullet-pointed text or an infographic (an informative graphic that, yes, members of our graphic design team would be happy to create for you).
Stick to just one or two fonts
There are plenty of different fonts to choose from, but displaying too many of them on the same website can risk it coming across as unprofessional. Besides, it would give the visitor’s computer more work to do — with adverse implications for the user’s carbon output.
One rule of thumb is to avoid using more than two fonts. Also, each font should be one that tends to come pre-loaded on a device. Here are several such ‘system fonts’ you could consider.
Make individual webpages easy to find
When someone lands on your website, you don’t want them to have to click more often than they strictly have to just to find the information they want.
A flurry of clicks can add heavily to the user’s carbon footprint, not to mention lead frustration to set in — potentially costing you valuable custom as a result.
What a relief, then, that we can design you a website where links to each of the main webpages are prominently signposted. Why not contact us to enquire?
