One Easy Way to Make Your Business Website & Email More Sustainable

There are countless ways to be more sustainable, especially if you run an eCommerce brand. 

From supply chains to business partners, each opportunity has room for optimization if your goal is to become more environmentally conscious. 

In the digital space, there is one easy way to make your business more sustainable, and today I’ll cover why and how you can do this for your business website.

More costly than we all think

It’s no surprise the internet takes energy to run. Not something we often give thought to, but it’s estimated by Barath Raghavan and Justin Ma to take up about 2% of the global energy usage. 

The more data you transfer electronically, the bigger your carbon footprint. Not to make you feel guilty or anything, but every single text and image you’ve ever sent has had a negative carbon footprint. (Coincidentally, this is the modern version of “a picture is worth a thousand words.”)

Alas, I’m not here to tell you to stop sharing with your friends, family, and fanbase.

In the world of marketing, it’s already a given that you’re going to produce and share content, so I want to show you how you can ensure the content is low-impact in order to minimize the negative effect your website and media has on the environment. 

Compress your images

What is image compression?

In short, it’s a way to reduce the file size of an image/GIF

Why use image compression?

Image compression is the key to a faster, better digital ecosystem. It has a variety of benefits, from reducing the negative environmental impact of your site to decreasing the loading times of the media you send to your audiences. 

How do I compress my images?

Before posting media to your site or distributing it via email to your thousands of loyal followers, consider navigating on over to one of the following sites to compress your files:

• imagecompressor.com
• tinypng.com
• Ezgif.com (for GIFs)
• https://www.freeconvert.com/video-compressor (for videos)
• https://www.veed.io/tools/video-compressor (for videos)
  

Simply upload your file, click “compress,” then download the file. When you reupload it to your site, every single person who views your compressed image will have a reduced carbon footprint equivalent to the amount you compressed!

What’s the downside?

The biggest drawback of using image compression is that it may reduce the image quality.

With 8k TVs and 4k browsers, we all want our images to be clearer than our eyesight. However, using full-size causes enormous strain on every medium you publish your content to for users when they want to view your content. The maximum page loading size for a standard website is upwards of 4MB, and the maximum recommended image size to produce on your site is 1.5MB. 

Data is expensive, and using full-size images can be especially costly for mobile users. Before publishing that unedited photo at maximum resolution, reconsider both the environmental impact and the accessibility for mobile users. 

Why the downside isn’t such a big downside

Fortunately, there are “lossless” versions of compression that can reduce your file size by up to 50% without even causing a loss in quality. What’s to lose?

Conclusion

Next time you’re about to hit “publish” on that high-res photo or video from your photographer, compress it to minimize the huge negative environmental impact it has. This results in faster loading times for your customers, less data usage, and less stress on the system overall. 

This applies to all types of digital marketing. To learn about how to make your email marketing practices more sustainable, read here about the one easy way to reduce your carbon footprint before you broadcast that next campaign. 

To a more sustainable future!