ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY ONLINE PRESENCES – PATRICIA GEYR

Sustainable web design is a commitment to making our digital presence more environmentally friendly. Through targeted measures, we can improve the performance of our websites, help reduce the Internet’s environmental footprint, and create a more sustainable future.

Faster loading times achieved through sustainable web design improve a website’s performance, leading to a better user experience and positively impacting search engine rankings. According toa Google study, users tend to leave a website after just three seconds ofwaiting. Fast loading times are therefore crucial for keeping users on the site and increasing potential conversions.

In addition, sustainable web design contributes to environmental protection byconserving resources and reducing the carbon footprint. By optimizing images, using efficient programming techniques, and choosing eco-friendly hosting options, a website’s energy consumption can be significantly reduced.

Less is often more: A clean, minimalist design with intuitive user guidance conserves resources and leads to more satisfied users. Minimalist designs are also timeless and therefore more durable. Anything that is used for a longer time is automatically more sustainable. It also eliminates the costs associated with labor-intensive and expensive relaunches.

High-performance programming—achieved through the use of local system fonts, CSS and JavaScript compression, streamlined code, and lazy loading—reduces load times. Efficient caching and the use of modern image formats such as WebP, which offer better compression, also help conserve resources.

Compliance with web standards such as WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) makes websites more accessible to people with disabilities. Accessible website design enables a larger number of people to use the website, thereby reducing the use of resources on other channels.

At web-crossing, all hosting servers are operated in a local energy provider’s data center—using 100 percent electricity from renewable energy sources. Various hosting providers offer “green” hosting packages that are powered exclusively by renewable energy. This, along with the use of virtual servers, also contributes to a website’s sustainability.

Website editors can also contribute to sustainability by compressing images and avoiding unnecessary media files. Using image optimization tools such as JPEGmini or TinyPNG can help reduce file size without compromising image quality. Uploading media files to the server only once and linking to them in the content saves storage space and also optimizes load times.

To keep the database clean and reduce storage requirements, unused content should be deleted regularly.

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• Header image by Patricia Geyr, web-crossing