Today, digital has taken on a lot of dimensions. Digital brings together all electronic and connected objects that are sources indisputable of progress, Whether for all kinds of exchanges and instant communication. It does not seem possible for us today to do without these practices.
They are part of our way of life. If they have helped save time, improve collaboration, and fight against paper waste, they have also increased the production and use of connected and digital goods. The COVID crisis has completed the picture by enforcing the use of digital at all levels and in almost all households.
creating new pollution
We would have thought for a moment that digital reduced environmental impact, but this is not the case. Dematerialization does indeed allow paper production and paper usage to be reduced, but it also significantly pollutes the use of the Internet as well as manufacturing all the equipment used.
This certainly includes computers, but also smartphones, tablets, watches… From this notion of the immaterial, it emerges that digital technology is ultimately far from untrue as far as pollution is concerned. Today, digital technology accounts for about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Some experts believe that this figure will double in 2025.
Online video is a huge digital pollution. They alone account for 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is important to start asking questions that will motivate us to limit this new pollution. There are actions to adopt on a daily basis and then there is Green UX which is making its way and which is to find solutions to the pollution of the web.
Green UX Concepts
Green UX is a set of simple practices that are known to be good for our planet. They aim to reduce the negative impact of our digital use on the environment. Furthermore, Green UX is an interesting option to reduce the cost of deploying your websites.
In fact, for example, by providing practice to limit the size of your site, you will no longer need to pay for ultra-powerful servers that consume a lot of energy to store your data. …
Ale’Environmentally friendly-Design to save our planet
Given the observation made above, it seems more than important to think about the idea of ​​eco-design and put it into practice in a concrete and immediate way. Eco-design is an ecological way of viewing and using digital. It helps to protect our environment against bad internet practices.
The eco-design approach has many interests. Here’s something:
- A lightweight site allows users to find their searches more quickly. In fact, simplicity drives the lightness and therefore fluidity of your site.
- The interface designed with a simple and user-friendly design allows easy navigation.
- A website that is light in data is also more efficient, as it is faster. User experience improves as pages take less time to load. Navigation is more smooth, intuitive and it keeps users on the site for longer. As we know, the longer a person stays on a website, the more likely he or she is to convert into a customer…
- Your SEO improves as your site becomes more accessible. After this it will be more easily recognized by search engine robots. They are hungry for accessible, clear and impactful data to give you access to the best investments.
- Mechanically, a better SEO will give your website better visibility on the web and hence more visits and hence more chances of conversion. • A simple site that doesn’t use complex and unnecessary features will be less prone to hacker attacks.
- All the elements mentioned above reinforce your brand image.
- And As mentioned in the first example, this will reduce the development cost of your website, as storing less data means a smaller server. And Cheap, That’s why less energy intensive
Free Green Audit Tools UX
He It is possible to evaluate your website to see if it meets the Green UX recommendations. You have at your disposal a number of free tools that allow you to conduct a green audit of your site.
Here are two:
It is a free tool that allows you to assess the environmental performance of your website. It gives you information on the page itself (weight, problems encountered, etc.) as well as on the environmental footprint associated with greenhouse gases. After this audit, it gives you suggestions to improve your score.
It is an application that provides Green UX testing that informs about the performance of your site on the design, technical and hosting aspects.
6 Tips to Make Your Site More “Green”
For the planet to breathe, web designers have to play their part. Indeed, an optimized design makes it possible to reduce its impact on the planet. How ?
follow us 6 Tips to make your site more energy efficient and better for the environment!
provide a minimalist design
Minimalism is the first step in designing an ecological venue. A clean web design makes it possible to reduce CO2 emissions, while integrating only the essential elements on the page. As a bonus, it optimizes the user experience through faster page loading.
To lighten your web design, start with:
- light up graphic elements : They should help the visitor navigate more easily and highlight the most important information. When possible, don’t multiply inserts and prefer icons to images.
- reduce images : In addition to limiting their number on pages, make sure they are small in size and in web resolution. If not, compress them or adopt the new format developed by Google: webp.
- Integrate the Home button into the website’s logo : The site does not need to be minimized with a specific link or view to return to the homepage.
- Split text content into blocks : They help users to understand the material better and add lightness to the design.
read also 6 Signs of Bad UX on Your Site
recycle material
Do you need separate views for each page? Sure ! For example, you can reuse a photo or video on all sub-pages of the same theme. You are free to apply a filter to it using CSS, modifying them a bit to avoid the repetitive side.
This good practice to reduce the ecological impact will lighten your website!
Read also: How to make ecological and sustainable materials?
use up to two fonts
Effective use of typography can make up for the lack of visuals, making your website attractive. Fonts create a hierarchy, telling visitors what’s important and helping them navigate the pages.
However, these require resources to load. The more different fonts you have, the heavier and more polluted the downloaded data will be.
Do the planet, and your visitors, a favor by using up to 2 fonts! One for the title and the other for the text.
read also : UX Design: 8 Principles and Laws to Know
Avoid Plugins If You Can Code Yourself
A quick test showed that a website without plugins loads in 0.6 seconds. One figure increases as you start installing extensions. However, more loading time = more CO2 emitted.
Solution ? Do as much as you can without plugins. If you have no coding knowledge, find a freelance webmaster. List your needs and he can set up the tasks you need to do.
In addition to making the site eco-friendly, this method reduces loading times and minimizes the risk of hacking.
shorten video
Video is king on the internet. Problem ? This requires huge consumption of data.
Use it and minimize impact if you need it for your content strategy or on your company’s presentation page.
For example, you can avoid the opening or closing credits to reduce the length (and therefore the size) of the video. Decrease the quality and format too: do you have to offer HD video at all? It’s no use unless you’re in the artistic field…
Also, consider disabling autoplay. Apart from tarnishing the user experience, this function consumes data unnecessarily.
limit the number of colors
To display colors on a website, a computer screen consumes energy. The latter increase as the color increases, but even when they are darker.
Just like with fonts, stick to two main colors to use on your website. If possible, choose light colors! Necessary ? Choose white as the main color and another color representative of your activity.
Our Cheat
We Recommend you to choose ecological hosting… This type of host only use renewable energy to run their data centers, They also try to cool down their servers naturally most of the time. Pay attention to the distance to your server… its proximity should be taken into account. In fact, the further away it is, the more energy is required to fetch data from your site. here is selection One of the best green hosts of 2022.
This is a French speaking solution for View Hosting. And efficient. They are very committed to ecology,
This web host is Swiss. It proves to be slightly less efficient than planethosterBut he is also very committed to the environment. Along with the quality ratio, its price also remains good.
Ex2 It is located in Canada, but also has a datacenter in France. The company is based in Quebec. This country being Francophone, you will have no difficulty communicating in French. However, if you wish, they can do it in English as well.
As you can see, the Internet contributes to environmental pollution. As today it doesn’t seem possible to do without it… and if you don’t disconnect completely, it is possible to reduce the impact of your website, by minimizing its design as much as possible. As a bonus: minimalism allows your visitors to find better information, which increases your chances of conversion!
There are professional graphic and web designers available at Codeur.com to help you adopt a less energy-intensive site. Describe your needs quickly and get multiple quotes from freelancers.
For further : Web Eco-Design: 5 Tips for Creating an Ecological Site