How can websites be more sustainable?

Overview

Websites can feel almost weightless. We open a page, read something, watch a video or complete a form, and there is nothing obviously physical in front of us. 

Behind the scenes, though, many files need somewhere to be stored. Images, video and code have to travel across networks, while the device you’re using has to process everything needed to display the page.

We may experience a website on a screen, but the infrastructure behind it is very real.

Design and development are only the starting point

When we’re asked about making a website more sustainable, the conversation will generally start with how the website is designed and built. This will include discussions about image optimisation, page performance, hosting and technical efficiency. It all matters.

These are things that should be carefully considered during a website project, particularly when design, development, performance, and hosting are planned together. What is easier to overlook is how much the website will change after it launches.

New pages are published, campaigns introduce tracking, new features are added, and editors upload documents, photographs, and videos. Some of the additions remain useful for years, but others stay because nobody goes back to review them.

That is where many websites begin to carry more than they need.

Websites build up over time

Most organisational websites will continue to change and grow after launch. Websites will record what was added, but not always why it was added or when it should be reviewed. The problem is that the website keeps serving all the additional pages, scripts, files and integrations that were needed at different points in its life. Several years later, nobody really has a complete understanding of what everything does. 

When we’re assessing websites for performance, we’ll often find more than one tool performing a similar job, old tracking code, and new pages replacing old information without the earlier versions being removed. Likewise, media libraries are often filled with large files that are no longer used anywhere. At the same time, integrations remain connected because no one is certain what will happen if they are removed.

Of course, nobody set out to create an inefficient website. It has simply got that way through a succession of additions that made sense at the time but were not reviewed later.

None of this usually happens through a bad decision. It builds up through a succession of reasonable additions that are never reviewed together.

Make sure everything has a purpose

The answer is not simply to make every website smaller.

A guide may answer questions that would otherwise lead to phone calls or emails. Strong photography may be central to how an arts, heritage or cultural organisation communicates, though I stand by the need to make sure images are properly scaled and optimised. A video may explain something far better than several pages of text. These things all require storage, data transfer and processing, but they can also provide real value to your site.

A better question is whether everything on the site is still needed.

Some content has an obvious lifespan. Events, vacancies and campaigns come to an end, while policies and guidance need to be reviewed or replaced over time. Unless these are being monitored, they can all stay online indefinitely and they can all still be found and served.

When content is not reviewed, old pages remain alongside newer versions and information starts to conflict. Editors have more content to manage, while visitors are left unsure which version is correct. The problem is not that a website contains too much useful information. It is that content and features remain after they have stopped helping anyone.

Sustainable design does not mean plain design

External services add up too

Most websites rely on services outside the main platform.

Analytics, video players, embedded maps, chat tools, booking systems, social feeds, marketing platforms and external fonts can all be useful, and some are essential to the service the website provides. They also add more scripts, connections, suppliers and decisions.

Different parts of an organisation often introduce these tools independently. Marketing introduces one, a service team commissions another and a previous supplier installs something directly into a feature the website uses. Over time, the collection becomes difficult to see as a whole because no one originally planned it as one system.

A useful question to ask is whether your organisation would choose to add each service again today.

Does anyone still use the information it collects? Does it need to run on every page? Is another tool already doing the same job? Is it still covered by the organisation’s privacy and consent processes?

Removing a feature is generally not just a case of hiding it. A tool can disappear visually while parts of it continue running behind the scenes. Removing it properly may mean deleting scripts, closing accounts and disconnecting integrations.

There are environmental reasons to review these services, but the wider impact matters too. Each one adds another dependency, another privacy consideration and another system that somebody may eventually need to maintain or replace.

Websites need housekeeping

Website maintenance is often described in technical terms. Software needs updating, security issues need fixing, backups need checking and faults need resolving. All of that is essential, but it does not automatically deal with everything a website has built up over time.

Unused plugins, old integrations, unlinked files and outdated documents can all remain long after their original purpose has gone. Broken links appear, temporary features become permanent and nobody is quite sure whether removing something will cause a problem elsewhere.

A full review can take time and may sit outside routine technical maintenance. It may need to be planned as a separate piece of work or focused on the areas most likely to have accumulated unnecessary content, files or software. 

The value of this becomes clearer over time. Without that review, editors are less certain about what they can remove and developers have to work around code and connections that nobody wants to disturb. Each new feature then sits alongside everything that came before, gradually making the website more difficult to understand and improve.

Eventually, an organisation may decide the platform needs replacing, partly because years of smaller additions were never brought back under control.

Making time for occasional housekeeping gives somebody the chance to look at what has built up, understand why it is there and decide whether it still deserves a place on the website.

Hosting is only part of the answer

Hosting matters because every website needs somewhere to run.

It is reasonable to ask a provider where its data centres are, how they are powered and what evidence supports its environmental claims. Those questions should be part of choosing a supplier, but hosting alone cannot tell you whether a website is being managed sustainably.

Moving a website to a provider with stronger environmental credentials does not remove old files, unused scripts or services that are no longer needed. It does not reduce an image that is much larger than it needs to be, and it does not decide whether an abandoned campaign page should still be online.

A hosting decision also does not account for everything the website loads from elsewhere. Video platforms, payment services, analytics and other tools all rely on separate infrastructure.

Hosting is important, but it should not become a badge that stops an organisation looking at the website itself.

It is also worth being specific when talking about the environmental work carried out on a website. Broad labels such as green, carbon neutral, net zero or sustainable do not always explain what has actually changed.

An organisation may have reduced image sizes, removed services that were no longer being used, reviewed its hosting or lowered the amount of data transferred across important page types. Explaining those improvements gives people a much better understanding of the work than relying on one general claim.

One score cannot describe the whole website

Website carbon calculators and performance tools can be useful. They can highlight pages that are unusually heavy on load, help compare different templates and show whether a change has reduced the amount of data being transferred.

What matters is understanding what the score is actually measuring.

Website carbon calculators use available data and assumptions to estimate the emissions associated with loading a page. Results depend on the method used and the assumptions behind it. Performance tools have their own limits. They assess particular pages, conditions and metrics, rather than everything happening across the website or every way people may use it.

Take a homepage. The homepage may be carefully optimised, but its score can only show what is happening on that page. Other parts of the website may load very differently, so one result cannot represent the site as a whole.

That does not make the tools any less useful. A change in the result may highlight something worth investigating, particularly if a page suddenly becomes much heavier after a new feature or service is introduced.

The score works best as a prompt to look more closely. It should help start the conversation rather than become proof that the whole website is performing well.

This should be part of ordinary website management

Most organisations do not need a separate process for digital sustainability. The right questions can sit within the work they already do.

When something is added to the website, somebody should know why it is there, who is responsible for it and when it should be reviewed. The same applies to content, media, tools and features.

A more sustainable website can still be visually engaging, technically ambitious and full of useful information. The aim is to reduce storage, transfer, and processing that no longer serve a purpose by reviewing what is added, who is responsible for it and when it should be reconsidered.

Building the website carefully matters. Looking after what it becomes matters just as much.

How this translates