Eco-design for a responsible website

The digital transformation of companies has made a significant leap forward in recent years, and while these advancements have become part of our daily lives, the digital explosion has its negative effects, not sparing the web sector. Let’s explore together the challenges of this approach known as eco-design.

Digital Pollution

Digital pollution refers to all forms of pollution caused by the IT sector (greenhouse gases, production of electronic waste, etc.). There is digital pollution generated by the production of a product, but also by its usage.

Numerous studies show that digital activities are responsible for 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and this percentage will only increase in the coming years.

Although it may be difficult to conceive that an intangible product like a website could have an environmental impact, it turns out that carbon emissions are produced every time someone visits a site, due to the many resources that make up the site.

Eco-Design for the Web

As website designers, we have a role to play in reducing digital pollution. At MV Studio, we are aware of this. That’s why our development techniques are constantly evolving to offer more efficient websites with a lower ecological impact.

What makes a website “eco-friendly” is the way it is designed and built! The choice of technology, development techniques, and the weight of media are all factors that influence a website’s carbon emissions.

Methodology

To make our websites less energy-intensive and reduce our digital impact, we have implemented several action points that cover the entire design process, from the graphic design phase to development.

Beyond the environmental impact, all these optimizations will have a positive effect on the site’s performance, speed, and SEO. This is all the more reason to apply eco-design from the very beginning of the project.

Hosting choice

We have chosen AWS as our hosting provider, whose data center design is intended to minimize their (and therefore our) environmental footprint.

Favoring clean design

Simplicity is the key, not just for the carbon footprint, but also for a better user experience with clearly and precisely presented and structured information.

Simplified website

We streamline the site and remove unnecessary features.

We offer the client what they need, as opposed to what they want (the What), the goals and results are met, but the way we achieve them is based on our expertise (the How). In this way, we simplify and optimize the website.

Optimized CMS

The way the site is built affects its energy consumption. Therefore, regardless of the chosen technology, we make sure to rework the CMS to provide our clients with a functional site, optimized at the back-end level and composed of only the necessary features for the site.

Reducing database calls

We optimize database queries to improve the performance of the databases.

Media weight

All added media are compressed and resized to optimize their weight: too small = pixelated, too large = too heavy, too energy-intensive.

Additionally, we use “lazy load,” which ensures that media are only loaded when they need to be displayed on the web page.

In this continuity, during the client training phase, we make the site administrator aware of their role in managing the site and thus its carbon footprint: not uploading overly large images or PDFs, using video streaming sparingly, centralizing emails to one address where possible, …

Minifying resources

We minimize CSS and JavaScript files to make them lighter: removing spaces, line breaks, comments, …

Choosing frameworks

Some frameworks are energy-intensive and sometimes not essential.

Take, for example, the JQuery framework, a library that simplifies JavaScript coding, but from which we have parted ways in our recent projects to maximize the optimization of our sites.

A Concrete Case: The MV Studio Website

Thanks to the simulation tool websitecarbon, it is easy to calculate the carbon footprint of a website. Although this tool does not provide a detailed audit, it is ideal for getting an overview of the overall performance of the site and the hosting provider.

At MV Studio, we apply this eco-design approach with the aim of building an effective mix between the desire to make the website eco-responsible and the company’s goals.

Would you like to contribute to digital sustainability with an eco-responsible website or reduce the carbon impact of your current website? Contact us!