Ensuring your website is sustainable is more important than many people realise. Websites are stored and processed by data centres, and they require a significant amount of energy to run.   

Reducing the energy that your website uses not only will reduce overall carbon emissions generated by the internet but will also improve the experience for your users. A sustainable website will load faster, is easier to navigate, and is more responsive, which can greatly improve the user experience.   

How to check if a website is sustainable?  

By inputting your URL into Ecograder, you can assess your website’s sustainability score. Less sustainable websites tend to have large images, lots of videos, many pages, and custom graphics and fonts.  

website sustainability

Website sustainability trends 2026  

If you want to improve your sustainable web design, small tweaks to your website layout and hosting changes can make a big difference.  

Ensure your website includes only necessary images, and delete those that aren’t required or visible. Compress larger images to reduce their size.   

Limit the number of videos and keep them short. Don’t have videos autoplay, this uses needless energy if the user isn’t watching. Host videos on third-party sites such as YouTube for the best optimisation and compression.  

Complete a website audit and remove pages if they aren’t receiving traffic or contributing to the user experience. Furthermore, if there are common tasks that users access – e.g., tracking a delivery – reduce the number of steps to reach this page. This improves the user experience and your carbon footprint.  

Check where your website is hosted. Switching to green hosting that uses renewable energy can lead to a more sustainable website. Also, hosting providers based in your country/area are more eco-friendly as the website does not need to be transferred overseas.  

Custom graphics and fonts take up more bandwidth than standard fonts, so limit these where possible. Also, cut excess copy from webpages.  

Lastly, keep your website software up-to-date and regularly check for bugs. Only track relevant data and optimise your code where possible.  

Maintaining an eco-friendly website is very important in the modern day. By implementing sustainable changes, you will also improve your website accessibility and user journey. At GIANT, our website hosting services can attract traffic without burning needless energy. To learn more, give us a call at 01604 250 900, or email us at info@gogiant.co.uk.