Greening Your Business Website
Websites are an often-overlooked green way of promoting your business. Instead of printing brochures and other literature, you can just send people to your website. If you don’t already have a website for your business, you should make it one of your New Year’s resolutions to create one in 2009. Luckily, building a website for your green business really isn’t as hard as you may think, even if you don’t know HTML and rarely use computers.
But before you start building and promoting your website online, consider this: websites themselves can be “greened.” Most people don’t know that there are green choices when it comes to hosting, site design, building, and content! You don’t can actually create a green website for your green business.
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Start by choosing a green hosting company. Most people, especially those who don’t know much about the Internet, choose a large hosting company like Go Daddy or Yahoo. While there are definite advantages to these companies, there are also a handful of green hosting companies, and most are not well know. Check out the following green hosts when making your hosting decision:
- Sustainable Websites - They offset 100% of the energy they use with wind energy, plus offer for free a database of green articles that you can use with your website.
- ThinkHost - This company offset 100% of the energy they use with solar and wind energy, and they offer telecommuting options for most of their employees. ThinkHost also has discounted or free hosting plans for non-profit green organizations.
- Go Green Hosting - Another company that offsets 100% of their energy with renewable energy, Go Green Hosting also has a green code of ethics that governs the way they do business.
You can read about more green web hosting options at Treehugger. This is just a start, but choosing a green hosting company is a great way to begin building a green website, so if you do nothing else, at least choose a green host.
Next, create a print-friendly website. If someone wants to print information from your website, can they do so without a ton of wasted space, a black background, etc.? You don’t have to compromise your design to make your website print-friendly. Create a link that users can click to see a print-friendly version of the page, which removes everything but the essential text and lays it out for a 8 1/2″ by 11″ sheet of paper.
Check out the article “What is a Printer-Friendly Web Page” for more information and tips.
Hire a green designer. If you’re going to get someone else to build your website (rather than doing it yourself), choose a green design company. In general, it is usually a good idea to hire someone if you can afford it, because you’ll waste a lot of electricity trying to design the same thing yourself. Here are some green web design companies you can consider:
- Studio7Designs - They offset their energy, have a paperless office, and donate part of their profits to environmental organizations.
- Creative Slice - This company powers their office with solar energy, supports a local green organization with monthly donations, uses energy-efficient computers, and more!
If you do opt to design your website yourself, keep in mind that clean design without tons of images, videos, etc. is the best option for a green website. The less time and energy it takes your website to load, the better!
Everything can be greener with a little thought. Even the green choices you make (like creating a website) can be even more environmentally-friendly. If you’re telecommuting, how can you green your home’s energy? If you start a carpool, who has the more fuel-efficient vehicle and what is the shortest route? If you buy fair-trade, organic coffee for the break room, can you cut down on waste by making smaller pots? Even if you think you’re going green, you can go greener.
Picture via tlloyd at sxc.hu.
[...] the need for transportation, lowering the cost of living and our ecological footprint? … Greening Your Business Website Ecopreneurist, CA - 38 minutes ago ThinkHost - This company offset 100% of the energy they use [...]
This is a fantastic point. We try to encourage our clients to do this. There is something to be said for DIY Websites, but there is also a lot of value in outsourcing (particularly if this is going to be the cornerstone of your marketing efforts).
Also, make sure the person doing your Website understands search engine optimization (SEO). There are also many ways PR and marketing can and should tie in.
My agency now lives in the space where PR, Web design, marketing and social media intersect. Our clients are seeing huge value in integrating these functions.
This applies to start-ups and mid-sized companies — not just the big boys.
Really, a Good concept, I will insist my Client to follow this.
Hi Allison, you make some very valid points here. Thanks for a great article.
Thank you so much for this great article!
Its great to see good companies getting recognition for their good works.
A large portion of the environmental impact for websites comes not just from hosting sites, but from other servers and systems that help connect users with information. Enernetics is helping businesses make their sites carbon neutral by analyzing their impact from end to end, as described on their website (www.CO2Stats.com). Their clients receive a “Green Certified Site” badge for their website, verifying their progress. For more see:
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/glenn-croston/starting-and-growing-green-businesses/how-make-your-website-carbon-neutral
Fantastic post! Sustainable hosting seems to always get overlooked.
Congratulations for this amazing article!! We can never stop learning when it comes to helping the environment. Thank you so much for sharing it with us young ecopreneurs. Im from Guatemala, Central America, and im sending this useful info to companies that offer this services!!! Regards to the author!
How about hosting your web site with a company that doesnt do offsetting, such as solarenergyhost.com, greenesthost.com, or aiso.net, which is the greenest of them all.
The disadvantage of go green hosting is the COMPLETE lack of any technical support whatsoever. I have had support tickets open since march that have not been answered. They NEVER answer the phone or e-mails and in fact appear to have been cut off the phone today.
And now I want to leave it appears that their backup system does not work (and of course they won’t answer my support tickets to make it work) so I have to spend the next week manually transferring everything.
Do not buy from them.
you will regret it.