Our planet is facing a climate change that affects it deeply. We are all aware that the glaciers are melting, that the deforestation of the jungles affects the air we breathe and that the large amount of plastic that is thrown away has created a giant island in the middle of the sea.
In an increasingly digital world, where we have exchanged paper for online transactions, we can mistakenly come to believe that technology does not pollute. However, nothing could be further from the truth, because The internet is one of the largest sources of CO2 emissions in the world.
Actions as everyday as uploading a photo to Instagram, sending a message, watching a video or storing files in the cloud create an ecological footprint. Without counting that Every action we carry out on the internet generates an expense of energysomething that does not appear on our electricity bills.
To give you a simple example: digital cloud It doesn’t take up space in your home or computer, but its true form is a huge server that stores millions of data, needs to generate thousands of watts to store it, and requires huge amounts of power to stay cool.
I’m sure you’re wondering now How can I reduce my carbon footprint? If you are a brand or company, you can start by applying Green UX strategies.
Sustainability-oriented design strategies
First of all, we clarify that UX design (User Experience or User Experience for its translation into Spanish) is about the feeling that a person has when interacting with our digital products. In this sense, the Green UX is based on applying UX strategies focused on sustainability, that optimize the websites and generate less environmental impact.
No need to invest a lot of money or undertake large projects that radically change your website. Simple actions such as reducing browsing time or the amount of data stored can make a difference.
To achieve this, the content of our website must be presented in a simple way, so that the user can more easily navigate through it. The keys are to reduce the number of page loads and to work so that the path of users to the desired content is shorter.
In short, you have to build intuitive, inclusive and efficient websites. Take a look at the following tips.
The 3 click rule
To achieve a sustainable web structure, it is ideal to consider the “3 click rule”, which is based on not allowing the user to make more than 3 clicks, from the moment they enter the web until they reach the page or content they are looking for. The creation of clear menus, categories and subcategories will make it easy for Internet users to find what they are looking for.
In fact, this practice can help your positioning, because the deeper your website is, the more difficult it will be for Google to reach all the pages. The recommendation is to create a structure with a maximum of 3 levels deepcounting home.
Likewise, a less browsing time will positively influence your CRO, Well, your page will achieve its objective faster, be it selling, promoting or registering leads.
save in bytes
While the more data there is on a web page, the loading time is longer, resulting in a larger carbon footprint, especially for people with slow connections.
What generates the most weight on a page are images and videos, so reduce their weight and the number of times they appear will help reduce the bytes that are used. The idea is not to leave the page blank, but to question whether the image or video being broadcast really adds value to the user or communicates necessary information.
In addition, a decrease in data that helps the page load faster, will cause it to be reduce the bounce rate and increase the conversion rate.
use cache
As we said before, each activity that is carried out on a website requires internal device storage, saved in the form of files, text or documents.
A very efficient strategy is enable browser caching, allowing website data from a local cache to be retrieved faster when the user logs back in.
Optimize SEO
The better the SEO we build, the less time users spend browsing the internet and probably fewer pages they need to visit to find what they need. Using search engines efficiently reduces our carbon footprint, plus users will feel happy and that will help you rank.
Finally, it is important to highlight that although these described actions may seem very small, their effect should not be underestimated. A million small actions become one big action and a real change.
Image: Depositphotos
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