Everything we send over the internet is sent as packets of data. And to send these, we rely on infrastructure like servers, cables and network equipment. These all use electricity - lots of it, which also means lots of carbon emissions - video streaming alone in 2019 had a carbon footprint similar to Spain.

While you don't control it directly, you can control how much you use. This also means that the better you use bandwidth, the greener your service or digital product can be.

We can help you with an audit to help establish a baseline for existing perfomance, an improvement plan to get better against this baseline, and continuous monitoring to help you manage over time.

Read on to find how why this helps.


Benefits

When you invest in making a digital product greener at the packets level, a few good things happen:

  • it gets more accessible - following sustainable principles lets more people, on more devices, access your service, in more situations. This increases the number of people who can buy your product or use your service.
  • it gets faster - because one of the best ways to make a site greener is to think more carefully about what you send over the wire, you end up with smaller sites and downloads, which load faster. Speed is the single biggest factor linked with increased conversion rates,  an effect observed by some of the biggest sites in the world. So a greener site converts better too.
  • it costs you and the world less - in cases where you pay for bandwidth yourself, making a site greener will usually show measurable reductions in the cost, and carbon emissions from month to month. Your users will thank you too, as this results in reduced costs for them as well - something we help you track.
  • it gets easier to manage over time - finally, because we work with you by establishing a baseline first before making changes, you have a clear way to see and share progress, and highlight future areas of focus for working towards a greener and better performing site.


How we work with you

Audit - establish a baseline

Usually we start with a call or workshop to establish what matters most to you, and come up with the key metrics to track in your team - like page size, loading time, accessibility, carbon and so on.

We use these as the basis for an audit, using a suite of open source tools we can help your team learn to integrate into their workflow.

Improvement plan - see where to focus first

Once you have this baseline, we help you set a budget - and some high level goals, in terms of performance, carbon and cost.

We’ll talk through a few scenarios, and what strategies in terms of specific techniques can show how you get there.

Monitor - manage over time

Finally, once you have a plan for improvement, we help you track this over time. You can set benchmarks against your own baseline, and regularly check these against your competitors.

We either share access over a hosted platform running open source software so you’re not locked in, or we help you set up the same on your own infrastructure.

If you already know you want to green a digital product, but don’t want to maintain the infrastructure to keep track this.

Let's work together

Have any questions? Get in touch, and drop us a line.