What is eco web design?
Today, everyone is concerned by ecology. Transportation, food, consumption ... All areas are affected, and the Internet is no exception to the rule.
In addition to the material that draws the raw materials for its manufacture, more and more sites are invading the web, requiring electricity to operate and releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.
We are designers, back, front or full-stack developers, project managers... And we work every day on a small part of the 1.4 billion websites present on the web in 2019.
It is therefore our duty to evolve the way we design websites and mobile applications in order to minimize their impact on the environment.
What is eco-design?
Eco-design, in a global way, is a practice aiming at having a company assimilate environmental elements when it develops a product, and this, from its design phase. The goal is to make a similar product pollute much less throughout its life.
More concretely, eco-design allows us to see beyond the design phase and to anticipate the life cycle of the product, from the beginning to the end of its life. In the field of the Web, which is prone to underestimated pollution, it is possible to act, and it starts with a well thought-out design of its site.
The eco-design of websites
A website needs a whole process in order to function. This includes the servers that host the site, powered by large amounts of electricity, the manufacture of terminals and devices, not to mention the millions of requests to display it.
So how does an eco-designed site translate?
The idea of web eco-design is to create effective websites, while reducing the impact on the environment, using the philosophy of digital sobriety and using good technological practices. The objectives :
- Reduction of requests
- Reduction of the weight of pages
- Limiting data download
- Limit tracking and external calls
- Limiting non-useful audio and video files
Web eco-design is a practice that aims to make the web greener. It is defined by practices of development, ergonomics, hosting that result in a decrease in environmental impact and certainly an increase in performance.
What are the benefits of web eco-design?
In addition to saving energy and reducing CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, there are other transversal, strategic and social benefits.
The site gains in performance, which translates into less loading time: people without 4G can connect to the site without being totally discouraged by the loading time, which is favorable to SEO and can therefore increase the flow of visits.
A site designed according to these principles also benefits from easier and therefore less expensive maintenance over time.
In addition, users with little digital experience or those who have devices that are not of the latest generation will also benefit from platforms designed according to these principles, because they will be able to focus on the essentials and the display will be easier on older terminals. It is therefore a real asset to inclusion and digital accessibility.
A topic for continuous improvement
Web eco-design is an important issue, and yet a recent concern about which there is still much to discover and learn. Every day, we strive to create more and more eco-friendly sites, and seek, find and apply these methods to improve the Web of tomorrow.
