Green Web Hosting and Sustainable Web Design

Every page view uses electricity: in data centres, across networks and on the visitor’s device. The internet as a whole has a meaningful carbon footprint, and website owners can reduce their share.

Lighter pages are greener pages

The good news is that most sustainability improvements are also performance improvements. Faster, smaller pages tend to please visitors and search engines too.

• Compress and resize images, and use modern formats.
• Avoid autoplaying video and heavy background animations.
• Remove unused scripts, plugins and fonts.
• Cache content so servers do less work for repeat visitors.
• Use system fonts or a small number of font files.

Choose hosting thoughtfully

Some hosting providers power their data centres with renewable energy or purchase verified clean energy. Look for transparent reporting, and consider a data centre location that is close to your audience to reduce transfer distances.

Design with restraint

Clear layouts, simple navigation and helpful content help visitors reach their goal in fewer page loads. Dark colour schemes can also reduce power use on OLED screens.

Measure and improve

Free tools estimate the carbon emissions of a web page. Treat the numbers as rough guides rather than precise measurements, and use them to track improvements over time.

Clean up regularly

Delete old files, unused pages and obsolete plugins. A tidy website is cheaper to run and easier to secure.