We’re a carbon conscious web design agency
3 min read
We’re committed to reducing our carbon footprint, working toward net zero and implementing change business-wide. It’s a journey and an education, but we’re all on board for a new era in responsible business.
Digital sustainability is one piece of the puzzle. As a digital agency, it’s our responsibility to help create a greener web, by raising awareness and educating businesses about the impact of their online presence and encouraging them to take action where they can.
However, we understand that businesses have different priorities, whether that’s brand, service, SEO, user experience, conversion, or sustainability, to name a few.
When we start working with a business, we talk about those goals and include discussions about sustainability objectives, educating our clients and partners on what can be done digitally to improve their carbon emissions and footprint.
People think making their website greener means losing their brand aesthetic, reducing content or pages, removing videos and images, and not having the whizz-bang of 3D or animations, and that’s why we talk about priorities.
When redesigning Abstrakt’s website, we knew we wanted an elevated website showcasing our capabilities with 3D, transitions, and deeply insightful pages about our core offerings in Craft CMS and digital brand identity. We knew our project pages needed to sing the most.
That meant designing and developing pages that were carbon-heavy with elements such as:
Animations or videos
High-resolution images
3D motion in our heroes
Large blocks of written content
Our carbon conscious take on this was to introduce:
Designing heavier pages with black backgrounds which emits less energy
A more minimalistic approach to our article overview and article pages
Using fewer fonts and font weights and self-hosting them
Image optimisation and compression using .webp files
Being purposeful with any animation used on-site
A green SEO strategy targeting user intent
Reducing server requests where possible
Streamlined user journeys
Regular content culls
Static page caching
Green hosting
Alongside that, we partner with Digital Carbon Online, which helps companies understand and reduce their websites' environmental impact and carbon emissions. The tool works out a website’s overall carbon footprint and offsets against trusted carbon removal programmes.
So, that being said, we practice sustainable design and development where possible, but we always prioritise the primary goals and needs of our clients and use best practice techniques to support lower carbon footprints where possible.
We’re all on a journey toward better sustainability and whilst we’re certainly not the leaders, we’re actively educating ourselves and others as we learn to be a force for change and good, whilst always creating that balance for our clients that delivers a website they can be proud of aesthetically, functionally, and sustainably
Lauren Swarbrick
Lauren has decades of experience forming authentic client partnerships and has a genuine desire to create better agency-client relationships.
She has specialist knowledge in digital strategy and digital branding.
Connect on LinkedIn.
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