Make your website leaner, cleaner and greener with a Website Sustainability Audit
Do you know how much CO₂e your website produces? Understand, measure and reduce your website’s carbon footprint with a Website Sustainability 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.
“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.
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, and you’ll see:
- Your website’s carbon footprint
- Your score out of 100
- How your website rates against others
- A full audit of your entire site
- 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 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 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 Sustainability 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 score and rating. That second Audit will show you where you’ve improved, achieved higher 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 for bookable events.
Website Carbon Footprint Audit Testimonials
What people have said about the Giles Metcalfe Digital website carbon footprint audit:
I’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 DESIGNERMany 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 CHARTER
“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.
Climate change is a serious threat. If we don’t want our world to become uninhabitable in a few years, we should all take action NOW.
Even if you don’t really care about eco issues and sustainability yourself per se, OTHERS DO and WILL hold you and your business accountable.
Sustainability is now a mainstream concept
Consumers, citizens and activists have turned sustainability into a mainstream concept that is able to ruin a business or organisation’s reputation and profits if concerns about environmental impact, business ethics and behaviour are not addressed.
Knowing your carbon footprint and reducing it could give you a competitive advantage over other businesses. Clients, customers and consumers care about your business’ sustainability credentials, including the carbon footprint of your business activities, products and services. As a matter of fact, conscious clients, customers and consumers are attracted to and actually pay more for lower impact products and services.
Evidently, adopting net zero strategies helps your business grow, save money, and boost business resilience. By becoming carbon neutral or carbon positive, business is closing the gap between government commitments and the 1.5 degree target, enabling you to:
- Increase revenue (by differentiating yourself in the market and charging more)
- Reduce costs (by changing behaviour on high emission activities)
- Engage stakeholders (attract, retain and motivate employees and staff; and attract investment)
- Mitigate risks (reduce the risk of possible future regulation that taxes carbon consumption)
- Gain accreditation (to reflect your values and ethics and best practice, enhance your reputation, and provide confidence to customers and stakeholders)
Basically, environmental responsibility benefits your bottom line.The economy of the future is low carbon, and companies that prepare for that future now will quickly gain a competitive advantage.
Net Zero
In June 2019, the UK Government committed to reducing the UK’s net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 100% by 2050, compared to 1990 levels.
This target is known as net zero, and milestones towards moving to a net zero emissions economy are now set down in UK law (although there is controversy around this).
Net zero is similar in principle to carbon neutrality, but is expanded in scale. To achieve net zero means to go beyond the removal of just carbon emissions. Net zero refers to all greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere, such as methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and other hydrofluorocarbons.
Emphatically, firms must commit to net zero to win major government contracts. They must also publish clear and credible carbon reduction plans before they can even bid for major government contracts.
A carbon reduction plan not only sets out where an organisation’s emissions come from, but also the specific environmental management measures that they have in place. The Plan must show the actions you have taken, and are taking now and going forwards, within your business to reduce your carbon intensity.
The new rules drive forward the green agenda, while also striking a balance to not overly burden and potentially exclude small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) from bidding for government work.
From 2025 onwards, you must now have a Carbon Reduction plan in place if you want to work with larger companies as part of their supply chain, too.
Now, you can no longer rely on Carbon Offsetting to claim Carbon Neutrality. And, there are changes to advertising standards around the terms carbon neutral and eco-friendly too to avoid greenwashing.
SMEs and Carbon
Small and medium-sized enterprises account for 99.9% of the business population in the UK. So, you have a vital role to play. Basically, even the smallest organisations, businesses and solo-preneurs have a significant carbon footprint. Through your premises. The vehicles you use. Your supply chain, too. Even your use of social media, email and especially your website.
Have you considered what it takes for a simple website visit?
Have you ever considered what it takes for a simple website visit? Basically, there’s the power required on the end user’s device… The communication networks… The data centres where a website is hosted, and the storage of the website on a server… Obviously, the resources needed to accomplish a simple website visit quickly start to add up.
The average website produces 6.8 grams of CO2 per page view. Therefore, a website with 10,000 page views per month would produce 816kg of CO2 per year.
Evidently, we all face climate change. However, we can take a small step that makes a big impact – create a low carbon website.
Greening your website
The more complex a website is, the more electricity it requires to load. And, therefore, the greater its climate impact. So, if you want to take action to improve sustainability and your eco credentials at your business, you can’t ignore your website.
The carbon footprint of a website has been “a thing” since around 2018. Undoubtedly, a lot has happened since 2018, but the fact that websites have carbon emissions associated with them is still not that well-known. However, myself and others are changing that.
Thankfully, there are some simple steps you can take to make your website leaner, cleaner and greener. Consequently, these changes have the added bonus of bringing better SEO and customer experience too.
