3 Easy Ways to Make Your Website Eco-Friendlier
Going green is not only beneficial for the environment, but also for your business.
One of the biggest problems business owners encounter is the carbon footprint they leave behind. The more waste they create, the more they’ll have to spend to clean it up.
This applies to you as a website owner as well. The slower your site loads, the more resources you use, the more expensive your overhead will be.
Having an eco-friendly website is not a choice, but a necessity to make your site more efficient. (Tweet this quote!)
The more efficient tools you use to run your website, the faster it loads. As a result, more users with visit your website, which helps in meeting your business goals online.
Here are some ideas to help you build up a cleaner and green website.
Transfer to green hosting
Your website performance depends on your choice of web hosting.
By choosing a hosting service whose servers are powered by renewable energy and optimized for energy efficiency, you can make an impact in the environment and decrease your overhead in maintaining your website.
Some of the most eco-friendly hosting services include HostPapa, GreenGeeks, and Green WebHost.
For medium- to big-sized businesses who receive lots of traffic, it would be best to use these premium hosting services and web hosts for WordPress. These offer the security and reliability that other web hosting sites don’t offer.
Other features from these hosting services include (but not limited to):
- Caching – stores website files on temporary folder for faster loading of web pages
- Content delivery network – decreases bandwidth by loading site from the nearest server relative to the visitor
- Minification – removes needless characters from your code when loading site), and others.
Compensate your carbon usage
If your website is still expending too much carbon even after going green, use CO2Stat to compute your carbon footprint.
Include the snippet code in your website to gather data and reports about your site’s carbon usage. Use the data to create and edit content and pages on your site to make them eco-friendlier. You can also display the data on your site to show visitors that you subscribe to green practices online.
Observe green design practices
Web design plays an important role in its loading speed.
Instead of going with a bulky web design, go with the simple route instead. Minimize the use of WordPress plugins and JavaScript codes to make your site load faster.
When displaying images on your site, make sure to optimize them first before uploading. Run the images using these paid and free image compressors to help your site load faster.
Even if you are using a managed hosting service for your website, you can further boost its speed by using a caching plugin or widget. Download W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache to improve server performance.
For WP Super Cache user, configure the plugin to its optimum capabilities by reading this guide.
Make room for white space in your website. Old CRT monitors require more resources to load light colors on a page. But new LCD monitors load light colors of your site much more efficiently.
Finally, you may want to consider transitioning to a greener lifestyle. For example, instead of using disposable batteries, you may want to use rechargeable batteries instead to minimize consumption.
These practices should help make not only your business, but also your life, much friendlier to the environment.
More on eco-friendly website:
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Your Aging Website: When and How to Get a Web Design Facelift
