Web Sustainability

The outstanding and, for me, most significant advantage of sustainable web development is that website speed, user experience, accessibility, and sustainability are very closely linked. Sustainability is measured in terms of energy consumption, which can be measured in CO2 emissions. This includes the energy requirements of the server, the energy consumption required to transfer the data from the server to the user, and the energy that the browser requires to display the website. The energy requirements of one side can be significantly influenced by working in the following four areas.

Content, UX & Design

Websites live from content, and it is mostly this content that brings the user to the website and, in the best case, also binds them. The easier it is to access a website's content, the fewer pages a user has to load to find the content they are looking for. Because fewer pages have to be loaded, fewer server requests are made, saving energy and CO2. Well-thought-out navigation and the content structure helps to keep CO2.

Web Performance

Web performance, i.e. the speed of a page, depends largely on how weighty the page is. The weight, i.e. the amount of data, in turn has a strong influence on the CO2 emissions of the site. When a website runs more efficiently, it uses less energy. Therefore, by optimizing the speed, significant improvements in CO2 emissions can be achieved.

Accessibility

Accessibility promotes sustainable web development to a considerable extent. The website is made available to users in an optimized manner, regardless of their device. This allows users with slow or outdated devices to load a faster and lightweight website version and use it more efficiently.

SEO

Search engine optimization not only has a positive effect on the ranking in the search results. With an optimized page, it is much easier for the crawlers, i.e., the small programs of the search engine providers that examine our pages, index the page and understand the content. This, in turn, helps to save energy and reduce the CO2 consumption of the site.

Becoming sustainable together

I look forward to a conversation, questions or a professional exchange.