Make your website leaner, cleaner and greener with a Website Sustainability Audit
Do you know how much CO₂e your website produces? Do you know if it’s Green Hosted?
Your website – and all digital activity in fact – has a Carbon Footprint, and that Carbon Footprint can be measured and reduced.
Understand, measure and reduce your website’s carbon footprint with a Website Carbon Reduction Audit. Because, when you need to improve sustainability and the eco credentials of your business or organisation, you can’t ignore your website.
Reducing carbon emissions associated with your website isn’t difficult to do. With some time and effort and some optimisations your website will be leaner, cleaner and greener.
Book your website audit now.
“Why should I care how green my website is?”
If you own a website or are thinking of creating one, you should be mindful about its ecological impact and carbon footprint. There are also several compelling business cases for having a low carbon and green hosted website, and, moreover, an ethics-focused business.
“Why should I audit my website?”
Essentially, consideration must be given to reducing the impact and carbon footprint of an existing website as part of a Carbon Reduction plan. It is also a great place to start when you look at where to begin reducing the carbon emissions associated with your business or organisation.
In some ways, it’s easier to build a low-carbon website if you start from scratch, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t relatively quick and easy steps you can take to reduce carbon emissions for your existing website.
The average website produces as much as 1.76g of CO2e per page view. Therefore an average website with 10,000 page views per month could generate 211kg of CO2e per year, which is the same as would be absorbed by 105 trees in a year.
1g CO2e per page view used to be considered acceptable, but in 2024 you need to rate at 0.5g or less to have any claim to a low-carbon website.
Above 0.85 gets you an F on a popular website carbon rating system.
Less than 0.49g gets you a C rating.
0.095g CO2e or less gets you a top class A+ rating on your website carbon report card.
My own website is largely text-based and does indeed achieve an A Grade, with less than 0.185g of carbon per page visit.
It was an A+, but a recent revision of my website with an upgrade to the Word Press Theme that I use and consequent increase in the file size of the code knocked it down to an A.
Reducing carbon emissions, one website at a time
Book your Guided Website Carbon Footprint Audit Session with me now for only £99 (£75 for Registered Charities and CICs). Understand, measure and reduce the digital Carbon Footprint and electricity consumption of your website.
You’ll get a full audit of your entire site, where you’ll see:
- Your website’s carbon footprint
- Your website carbon report card rating (graded A+ to F)
- A breakdown of how each element on the page contributes to the overall total CO2 score
- A comprehensive run-down of areas for improvement
What you can expect from the Guided Zoom Website Carbon Footprint Sessions
- You book on via my Calendly (make sure that you go for the £75 option if you’re a Charity or CIC)
- On the day, we sit down together on Zoom
- I take you through Page Speed and Carbon Footprint auditing tools to give you a range of results and recommendations that are bespoke to you, not generic or arbitrary
- The full website (not just the homepage or individual pages) is audited
- You see the scores, grades and reports, generated in real time, for the tools that bring back immediate results.
- Where a unique URL for the report is generated, you can harvest that and save it for later reference or sharing with a colleague
- Where the reports aren’t generated in real time, those results are shared with you at a later date (usually within 2 to 5 working days), via email
- Further resources and references go out to you after the Zoom meeting has finished
The Audit: what you get
- An understanding of how and where your website emits carbon
- A benchmark and grading for the carbon footprint of your website
- Hints, tips and tricks to reduce the carbon emissions associated with your website
- An audit of the full website, not just the homepage or individual pages
- A range of results and recommendations that are bespoke to you, not generic or arbitrary
- Pointers to where you will find the exact files and elements referred to in the results and recommendations
- A take-away action plan for website carbon reduction, that’s realistic and achievable
- Individual action points for you or your web developer to fix and optimise
- Additional resources for further reference
- Data and figures to feed into your Carbon Reduction Plan or other carbon calculation tool: a Carbon Translator, Carbon Syncing Calculator, or Digital Emissions Calculator, for example
What you get from the Full Website Assessments
Depending on the exact scope and requirements, and costing from £275 (plus bolt-ons that cost extra):
- Full website health check and assessment
- Page Speed insights
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Audit – On Page and Technical
- Keyword Research
- Search Engine Rankings (SERPs)
- Competitor Research and Analysis
- Carbon Footprint Audit (if included as an option)*
- Ethical Audit (if included as an option)*
*additional bolt-on, at £100 extra, per Audit type
NB. Example costing, including Full Website Assessment with additional Carbon Footprint and Ethical Audits as bolt-ons = £475.
Detailed research and reports, in document, spreadsheet and PDF formats, covering performance benchmarks for your website and for your peers and competitors too, plus recommendations and action points.
What happens after the Website Carbon Footprint Audit or Full Assessment?
Following the Audit (or Full Website Assessment), I’ll explain to you exactly what needs doing. In Plain English.
No in-house web developers or existing partnerships? No problem, because I’ll also recommend and introduce you to capable and reputable web developers. Subsequently, they’ll work with you to implement the changes needed.
When that remedial work is done, we’ll then repeat the Audit to give you your new scores and grading. That second Audit will show you where you’ve improved, achieved better scores, and the exact amount that your website’s overall carbon footprint has reduced.
Website Carbon Footprint Audit (per session) – £99 (£75 for Registered Charities and CICs)
See Calendly – Giles Metcalfe to book your Audit.
Case Study: The Good Business Charter
As Environmental Responsibility is one of the 10 Components of Good Business Charter (GBC) accreditation, it absolutely made sense for The GBC to look at their own website and reduce its environmental impact.
Back in May 2023, I worked with The GBC’s internal team to audit their website and advise on where significant gains in carbon reduction could be made.
Together, we worked to reduce the website’s size and carbon emissions. From a hefty 6.04 MB and 5.058g CO2e in May of 2023, to a leaner and more creditable 1.77 MB and 0.563g CO2e currently.
As the website contains lots of images and video, it was never likely to achieve an A rating (or an A+). However, focusing on the areas where gains and optimisations could be made, significant carbon reductions were possible nonetheless.
It was really great to work with the team from the GBC and help them to achieve “a more sustainable digital footprint”, and their testimonial is one of the four shown below.
Website Carbon Footprint Audit Testimonials
What people have said about the Giles Metcalfe Digital website carbon footprint audit:
Many thanks Giles, for your time and insight into helping us work towards a more sustainable digital footprint for the Good Business Charter The first step on our journey!
THE GOOD BUSINESS CHARTERI’d HIGHLY recommend getting in touch with Giles and finding out more about his website carbon footprint audit. It will really open your eyes to the impact your website is having on the environment and then Giles will explain exactly what you can do to make your website leaner and greener.
ALISON PETTY, MINDSET COACHIt was great to have Giles on hand over Zoom to talk me through the whole process, explaining anything I didn’t understand and giving me quick tips on how I could improve things! He’s very knowledgeable and passionate about sustainability. If you are too, I’d recommend getting in touch with him!
BELINDA HODDER, FREELANCE COPYWRITERIf you would like to reduce the negative impact of your website, I recommend you speak to Giles who is an expert on this stuff and can offer you a website sustainability audit so you can clean up your act. Go on! What have you got to do that’s more important than this?
ZENA BARRICK, WEBSITE DESIGNER
