This voiceover was done in one take with all imperfections included - so you may hear some background noise or me stumbling over my words.

Happy Wednesday! Last week I officially reopened the doors to the Green Web Design Course and I wanted to give you all a little peek behind the curtain.

Courses can be so hit or miss, it may or may not vibe with your learning style, you might not know if you know too much or not enough to take a course. And buying courses out of FOMO or impulse is not what I’m about here - intentional investments are my jam.

So I want to give you a well-rounded look into this as well as share some green web design goodness for free!

There are currently 3 videos available for a free preview in the course:

• The welcome video: to get to know my vibe and intentions in the course

• What is green web design: to get a little intro to the topic and a grasp on how the course approaches it (also what this post is covering today!)

• Green web design myths: to cut through the bullshit and misinformation online that creates a breeding ground for panic and impulse purchases (I’ll share that one in a written form next week!)

If you want a little peek at these topics, feel free to keep reading if reading is more your jam (all course videos include a transcript, too!) or sign up for the free preview through Thinkific and check out the videos.

Enough awkward promo from me, here’s what you’re actually here for!

Green web design, at its core, is sustainable, eco-friendly, and ethical.

It might seem redundant to say both sustainable and eco-friendly, but I think sustainability in the sense of something that is able to be maintained deserves extra emphasis. Especially when we think about our own approach and making sure that we don't hit burnout. And in making sure that clients can maintain their website.

Eco-friendly as you probably immediately thought means being kind to the planet.

Lastly, the ethical piece is making sure we're approaching all of our design decisions, especially on websites which are a huge sales tool for a lot of us, with people in mind and not being sleazy just to make a little bit of money.

The main way the web impacts the planet is through carbon emissions.

We’ll go over the basics just to lay the groundwork and set the framing for how websites can be green or not green (there's way more on this in the electricity video in the first module of the course).

Websites emit carbon because websites run on servers. Those servers use electricity. That electricity is often powered by fossil fuels. And that releases CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

That's the main issue at hand for what green web design is trying to solve. There's other ways that it touches the environment which is also covered in the first module of the course.

The philosophy behind green web design

We are not talking science or numbers or anything technical yet. We are talking about the philosophy and the approach to the thinking behind green web design.

We should approach green web design with intention.

This intentionality and this mindfulness is where we are going to start to be able to make magic with websites to make them greener. And we’re going to be able to explain our processes and our reasoning more confidently to clients, to other designers, or to judgmental family members when they ask what the heck you do. That is the goal!

The other reason we’re starting here is website design can often cause us to freeze up. I think as designers and maybe as developers too, this can impact us a lot.

The possibilities of digital design and the web seem endless. I learned print design first in all of my design days, and I’m sure a lot of you might be able to relate.

Print has pretty hard limitations in the sense of how big you can print something. I mean, there's ways around it but then budget becomes a huge issue. So the limitations close in on you so much quicker when you’re designing in print.

But with web design, it almost feels like whatever your mind can dream up, can exist. And sometimes we dream up things that we can't do because of our own knowledge base and comfort, or because of the platforms that we use, or even because of the client's comfort level and vision in being able to update and maintain their site after it’s built.

And on the other side of that, you might have all the coding knowledge in the world. You might be just a master website designer. But maybe the budget or time doesn't allow for everything that you want to do. And then you have to start making creative edits.

Web design can open a million different cans of worms and create more roadblocks than creating something physical.

But there is an exciting opportunity with websites because of the possibilities as well. It's a balance of trying to make all of this stuff work. And I think we all have to acknowledge the different nature of this beast.

Because it can feel scary and it can be unknown and then trying to do this thing that is already a huge, vast, opportunity for creativity and trying to narrow it down and make it green can feel like a lot of extra pressure to add into this already complex process.

But I hope that thinking about web design through this green lens might actually make it easier in general, because you'll have all these other considerations that will narrow your scope. The possibilities will not necessarily be endless anymore. And it might make your job easier.

What makes a website green?

Is there a gold standard? Is there a website that is the greenest of all websites that we should all strive to be? Does that exist?

I've searched before because when I first dug into this topic, I was like “Okay, give me a goal. Give me a standard, tell me what to do and I'll do it.”

But there is not a gold standard for green web design. And some people will say, “Oh, the gold standard is if your web page is this many kilobytes or loads this quickly” or whatever. But I think that's all bullshit.

There is this quote that I think about a lot. It’s from Tom Greenwood's book Sustainable Web Design. I think it shows a trap that's very easy to fall into. And I don't want anybody to fall into this trap.

Let me set the scene of the context of this quote before I share it. Tom’s talking about what is the ideal green website. As I said before there is none and there really isn't but, in theory, according to Tom’s book, it would be a website that is made up of zero kilobytes has zero data transferred from server to computer, is made up of zero text, zero images, it's just zeros across the board.

You might be thinking okay, well, if it has nothing, it doesn't even exist. And you’re exactly right! That's what he's saying is basically the greenest website is one that doesn't exist.

But then he goes on to say,

“It might be true that the most eco-friendly website is the one that doesn't exist. But as web designers and developers, that's not particularly helpful advice.”

And I think that this is just so important to keep in mind, because I've seen a lot of people fall into this trap of cutting vital information and assets from their websites for the sake of emitting a smidgen less carbon, and it makes no sense.

I've heard designers say that they've cut their entire portfolio from their website, and the only way that possible clients or people who are looking to hire them can access it, is by emailing them and asking to see it. Which isn’t the greatest selling strategy because that puts so much effort on the visitor side of the site.

It's just not realistic. And at that point is your website even doing its job?

If you have a bloated site, but it's getting you clients, it’s making sales, it's supporting your lifestyle and it's valuable and accessible to the people you want to reach, that website is a million times better than having the fastest, most lightweight website that doesn't do any of those things.

If your website doesn’t get you clients and isn’t helpful to anybody who's visiting it, that's the true waste and the true drag and the true emissions that don't need to happen.

So that's the kind of nuance that I want everyone to approach this course with. Not just aiming for zeroes across the board or however low you can get your numbers because anyone could design the fastest website of black text on a white background, no styling on it, all HTML, and it would generate zero clients. But it’s possible.

Always keep in mind the goals for why we're doing this, the reason you're creating a website. Keep that in mind. Do not sacrifice important things, just for the sake of saving a few grams of carbon because at the end of the day, green web design is not going to save the planet.

There is no equation to a green website

I say all of this to lead up to this point: There is no equation to a green website.

A green website can't only be defined by how much carbon it emits or how fast it loads because it's not all about the outcome and the impact in those numbers. Websites are so human, and so emotive and they connect with people. And it's because of this people element, there can’t be an equation. There's nuance to all of it.

And all of this might be super obvious but, as humans, we can get caught up in perfection. And perfection is not the goal. The goal of this course is not to be able to design 100 kilobyte sites that load in .2 seconds and that are absolutely stunning by the end of it.

It’s to design greener websites that work and that are intentional.

Let’s dig into the definition of green web design a little more. I said earlier that green web design at its core is sustainable, eco-friendly and ethical. But how do we make that happen?

There are four different pieces of this puzzle to consider as we approach a project.

Green web design is made up of 4 pieces.

The four pieces include: the planet, the people visiting your site, the team behind creating the site, and the client who it’s being created for.

1. Green web design is kind to the planet in the sense that it aims to emit less CO2 than it otherwise would have without the green design principles.

2. It’s kind to people by being accessible. Whoever comes onto your website, no matter their disabilities, their limitations, their internet speed, whatever it is, they can still access and view your website.

3. On the other side of it you have the parts that go into the creation process. The team making the site is made up of the designer, developer, copywriter, and anybody else who's working on this website. And if there are multiple people in the room, even if you’re not the one in charge, you still have a responsibility to speak up for the green web design principles to make the project better in the end.

4. And finally you have to think about the client or whoever you're building the site for. If they want to be able to easily go in and maintain their site, you have to consider those possibilities. Websites are living beings, they change over time. When you hit publish on that website for the first time it’s almost frozen in time. It will never stay 100% like that because it's meant to be changed.

This image above is actually flipped a little bit. The outcomes that are on the left are directly impacted by the process on the right. But the process is usually not thought of first in green design. The outcome is what’s on everyone’s mind but it does come secondary to the process. In order to design a green website, you have to adjust your process.

So let’s dig into the website process and see how we can change the way we approach a project.

How we typically view website design

This is a pretty simplified version of a usual website design process. It hits all of the major pieces of a project and is kind of similar to what we sell clients on.

You, as a designer, get a request for a website project. You spend weeks or maybe months, depending on how big of a project it is, designing the website and then developing it. Possibly from branding to the layout to the content to getting it built and developed and tested.

Once all that is done, you publish it to the server, wherever this website is living. And then it's live and hopefully visited by the target audience of the project.

But none of these steps actually talk about anything to do with the planet or people or intentionality. It's kind of just like when you go to wiki how, and you get these basic steps of how to do something.

So let's expand it a little bit.

The expanded view of website design

The actual process when we’re accounting for the planet and people looks more like this. You still get the client request, obviously, to trigger the website project. And at this point you are probably having conversations about website builders, site mapping, their goals, all of the stuff you need to get your bearings with the project.

And then in the website design part of the project, you get more detailed. What are all the things you need to consider to create an impactful and greener website?

You primarily have what physically goes on the page: your content.

• This includes your assets so your images, your videos, your fonts, your copy, anything that you put on that page falls into this category.

  • And with each piece of content you can ask yourself: Is this ethical? Is this needed? Is this helping my website reach its goals?

  • The less you put on the page, the less energy your website needs but it all must still do its job.

• Another type of content is data.

  • Are you using cookies? Are you using Google Analytics that's collecting data?

  • Consider the ethical points to it and make sure you can defend your decision because there's drawbacks to everything that we do. The good has to outweigh the bad.

• Last for content, and maybe it’s a little bit of a stretch but I’m counting it: Ecommerce and purchasing.

  • This is your products, your point of sales, the information you’re collecting. Are you being incredibly transparent about what you're selling? Are prices fair and sustainable?

  • With purchasing, you might also want to ask about shipping and delivery. How is the stuff that they're selling getting delivered? Do they offset the carbon? Do they use recycled and recyclable materials? Is it compostable?

  • These questions can help you get to know the client’s process more and could also help you decide if you truly want to take on the client. Even if the answer is no to the sustainable packaging and shipping questions, you can plant that seed by asking and maybe it's just not something they've thought about, especially if they want a green website, or it could be something they’re working towards. Just a consideration as the digital world permeates into our physical world, too.

The other side of website design, and this absolutely goes hand in hand with content, is accessibility.

Thinking through: Are your colors high enough in contrast? Are your images able to be read by a screen reader? Is your website able to be tabbed through by a keyboard? There's an entire module on accessibility in which all of this gets dived into with details.

That’s the website design side where we can start to see how we can adjust our process and decide how to spend our time better.

Once the site is designed and developed, you publish it to a server somewhere.

This is usually done by your web host. So if you're using WordPress or a different builder that is not married to its own web host, you get to choose that yourself.

If you're using something like Squarespace or Shopify, you build with that platform and then you publish it onto their servers. So a little less choice there, but that's okay. It also makes it easier.

The server itself is made up of hardware which deals with resource extraction, manufacturing, designed obsolescence, and e-waste. All of this is covered in another video in the first module.

And like what we discussed before, all websites use energy from the servers they live on and that’s what we primarily think about and have an easier time controlling when it comes to green web design.

Lastly, once it's published and live, it's visited by users. And in most cases, it's kept up by the client. Possibly by yourself, however it works out, but that is a part to consider as well and to actually talk about up front because everything else that you do builds from that.

With understanding how the web design process can be broken down into these micro steps you can start to see there's a ton of opportunity to make websites green.

And that's how we're going to do it. We’re making green websites by digging into everything here one step at a time.

If you’re interested in learning more about green web design, check out these resources:

7 Days to a Greener Website Challenge: 100% free! Once you sign up, each day, you’ll get a task emailed to you with a video walkthrough + PDF guide to help. Works for any website platform. DIYers and designers welcome! No coding knowledge needed.

Green Web Design Course: Learn everything from the impact of the web on the planet to how to optimize all the details on a site. With seven modules, the curriculum gives a well-rounded look at what green web design is, why it’s important, and how to implement it in your work and marketing. No coding knowledge needed. Currently on sale for $250 USD (originally $300. Sale ends April 30th, 2024).

Thanks so much for venturing into the Blue Raspberry Patch with me! I love exploring all these sustainability and design topics in longer form and sharing little berries of info with you all. I’d be delighted if you’d join me here!