We know what reaction this blog must have evoked! Mostly it would have been,” Yet another Click Bait”! After all, how can a website become energy efficient! It can become efficient for sure, improve the UI/UX too but energy efficiency- well that is taking fantasy a bit too far!

However, what if we tell you (and very logically) that this isn’t any joke. Websites can be made energy efficient too such that the internet consumes lesser energy in return! Sounds exciting right! Let us have a look at how can we make an energy efficient website.

How to make an energy efficient website?

Here we are going to discuss the 9 Ways to make an energy efficient website-

Successful SEO: SEO results in providing the exact data and web page on time with less effort. Successful SEO plays an essential role in delivering real user data with less browsing and less use or energy consumption. Here we can save energy and time both by making our web pages uncluttered and efficient SEO. The use of the internet will also reduce which in turn means lesser energy.

Reduce the number of images: The web developer, while developing the website, must keep in mind that images contribute to page weighing. More images mean more memory and data usage, which ultimately leads to more energy consumption. So the choice of images must be appropriate in number and size. Images must communicate useful info, and images must add value to the page, images must be relevant, images must be uploaded by critically analyzing these factors to make an energy efficient website.

Reduced videos: Similarly is the case with the number and size of videos on the website, more lengthy video consumes more data usage when user will watch them results in more energy consumption and heavy load on the users CPU. So always put small content videos and relevant ones.

Web fonts: Another way of reducing energy consumption and making your website more energy efficient by choosing the right font size on the web pages. Yes, you are right that web font enhances the website’s visual appeal and adds weight to the website. We can use our content without doing bold, and we can simply use times new roman or Arial font as they are already on the user device. So it is said by the website developers that at some places like in content and design, they are very handy and easily reduce the energy consumption by using their minds more critically.

Use of less javascript: Are you using JavaScript in your websites? If your answer is yes, then it means that your file weight on the web page is increased and also requires an increased amount of processing by the user device. JS increases the CPU usage, which results in increasing the use of energy consumption of the device. For interactions, fonts, functionality, and animations, one can go with CSS like technologies but remember less use of JS. It also slows down the websites. There is an app as a tool where we can measure performance, data, and energy impacts by ad scripts.

Build static web pages: Whenever the users browse and search some content or webpage in your website or have some queries, then the webserver has to think and send back the information required by the users; sometimes it has to upload the whole page, which causes the server to consume more energy. So one solution can be the use of server caching technology. This can be achieved successfully by writing the web pages as static files in HTML, CSS, and sometimes in JS as per the requirements. We can also go for a static site generator or specialist static web host to convert your CMS-powered website into static files.

Use progressive web application technology (PWA): the core feature of progressive web application technology is cache files on the user devices, which means that content and assets do not need to be loaded again and again by repeat visitors. This will improve the time and use of energy.

Web hosting: The choice of web hosting must be made strategically; a lot of energy is consumed by the websites in the data center and in the transmission of data to and from the data center. The careful selection of web hosting gives the benefits of increasing energy efficiency and speed of web pages and ,thus, helps in making an energy efficient website. It can be done using server caching, choosing the host with a high PUE rating, and using a data center close to users.

Use of CDN: you can locate your data center close to your users to reduce energy consumption but think it will be that much easier if your users are spread worldwide, no it will be a little bit tough. So here we come with the solution that is CDN (content delivery networks), which provides a great solution to this. It serves assets such as image files from a network of data centers around the world. It means that the largest file will be uploaded with the help of CDN location in the user’s regions. It will automatically reduce the distance of transferring data. Once again, the energy consumption is improved, and efficiency increases and improves page load times.

Perfection is a word that can not be attained 100 percent, but we can try our level best to improve efficiency and to reduce energy consumption as much as possible. It’s a difficult task to eliminate the wastages of energy in the web industry. Moreover, we can not measure it accurately, but yes, we can control it by keeping more attention and thinking carefully in every aspect of design, content, development, and hosting.

Writing in clean mode, using the optimized images, using and writing in optimum fonts, using accelerated mobile pages (AMP) are the other factors that can help in making an energy efficient website and increases the website value. A better website will be developed by using tips and technologies to reduce energy use in every task we do with our websites.

Also Read- Importance of being Energy Efficient for the Startups