Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The earth's temperature is getting hotter and hotter. The sea levels are rising, the ice sheets are shrinking. And I'm not a scientist, but I do believe everyone can use their skill set to do their part. That's why I'm introducing a brand new bra with a built in nipple. So no matter how hot it is, you'll always look cold.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Wow, that's quite a way to start a wine marketing video. But in words that my friends, family and colleagues probably never thought they'd hear me say, I think Kim Kardashian is right, and I think we all need to do our little part. Her part is producing climate change proof nipple bras. And my part is providing nipple braof advice for a more sustainable web when most people think about carbon emissions, fossil fuels, environmental impact, we tend to think of the global aviation industry or gas and oil companies. But did you know that the Internet accounts for almost as much global greenhouse emissions as aviation? The good news for us is that it's much easier to build low carbon websites than it is low carbon planes. And it's something that every person who operates, runs or needs a website can enact tomorrow. So when we talk about sustainable web design, let's look at what we mean. Let's look at how you can make changes to improve your winery website. Let's get into it.
If the Internet were a country, it would be the 6th largest consumer of electricity on the planet. Annual Google searches produce enough co2 to drive to the moon seven times. A website with 10,000 page visits per month generates the same annual emissions as driving over 1000. Digital technologies will represent almost 8% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. And the average web page today is nearly four times bigger than it was in 2010. And that number is just continuing to rise. So what is sustainable web design, and why should we care? Sustainable web design is the practice of designing and developing websites in a way that is environmentally friendly, energy efficient, and minimizes the carbon footprint of the web industry. It's important because the Internet is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. And by making our winery websites more sustainable, we can help reduce the impact of the web on the environment and combat climate change. But there are also many other benefits of sustainable web design and development. Improving the performance and speed of your websites, which can also improve user experience and increase customer satisfaction. Reducing the carbon footprint of your website is measurable and just one more way that you can demonstrate your commitment to sustainability, which can, of course, improve your reputation and attract environmentally conscious customers. You can also potentially reduce your hosting and other web related cost by using energy efficient practices.
But what about ecommerce? Why does ecommerce matter? Why is it different from any other sites? 2020 saw an absolute boom in the carbon footprint of the Internet and much of this came from traditional brick and mortar sellers rapidly adopting ecommerce in order to stay afloat during the pandemic. Ecommerce websites are generally considered to be less sustainable than static websites because they typically require more resources and energy to operate. This is due to several factors including ecommerce websites generally have more complex and dynamic functionality, which requires more processing power and data transfer to support. This can increase the amount of energy that is consumed by the website and its hosting infrastructure. Ecommerce websites often have a larger amount of content and media, such as product galleries, images and videos, which can also increase the size of the website and the amount of data that needs to be transferred when a user visits that site. Ecommerce websites generally have more traffic and more user interactions such as product searches and purchases, which can again increase the amount of data transfer and processing required to support your website. And last but not least, ecommerce websites often have more third party integrations such as payment gateways and fulfillment services, which again will increase the amount of data transfer over time. Overall, the additional functionality, content and traffic, as well as third party integrations of your ecommerce site will make it less sustainable than a static website. So that begs the question, what are some of the best practices for sustainable ecommerce web design and development?
The good news is that they aren't that hard for you to adopt. First, consider switching to renewable energy for hosting and other web related activities, aka green web hosting. Data center use equals about 15% of the Internet's carbon footprint. Making this change could produce measurable reduction in your digital emissions. Another easy win? Start optimizing your images and other media to reduce file size and improve load times. Compressing images can significantly reduce their file size without noticeably affecting their quality. If you're using Photoshop, you can actually reduce the size of the image as well as save to a JPEG quality of somewhere between four and six, not a Photoshop user. That's okay, you can go online and use something like tiny PNG, which is an absolute lifesaver for all of our nondesigny clients. Of course, an added benefit to this is that by compressing your images, your website will load faster, providing a better user experience. Lazy loading have you ever opened a website? Often on your phone, and as you're scrolling, the images actually load? That's what we mean when we talk about lazy loading. Lazy loading reduces the initial page load time and the amount of data transferred. This makes your website faster and more efficient. It also means that if people don't scroll, those images don't have to be loaded. Be sensible with your web fonts and be sure that all of your other design elements are optimized for performance. So this might be tiny, but it adds up over time. Don't use a dozen different fonts. Reduce down to what you need, and if your brand requires four to five different font families, you probably need to undertake a branding review anyway. Use caching to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred, so caching involves storing frequently accessed data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. For instance, if your website's images and scripts are stored in a cache, they don't have to be refched from the original server every time a user visits the site, thus reducing data transfer and improving site speed. Use a content delivery network, which is called a CDN, to distribute content more efficiently. So a CDN is a network of servers located around the world that stores copies of your winery's website content. When a user accesses your website, the content is delivered from the nearest server. This significantly reduces the time it takes to load the website. This is especially beneficial for an industry like wine with a global audience, as it ensures that that content is delivered quickly regardless of where the user is located.
Please ditch the autoloading background videos drone shots across the vineyard. These are invariably heavy file sizes that significantly reduce your digital sustainability and moreover, people hate them. So there you have it, a pleasantly Kardashian free primer for sustainable web design and development, and steps that you can undertake tomorrow to improve the digital footprint of your winery website. If you have any questions or comments, be sure to leave them below. In the meantime, don't forget to like and subscribe and join me next week for more smart marketing for growing wineries.
