Why you should care about your website carbon emissions

The main reason you should care about your website carbon emissions is the same reason we should care about our carbon emissions in general: our carbon footprint (as individuals, businesses, and a species) is having a negative impact on the environment. So, thinking about ways you can reduce that footprint and then taking the necessary action is important.

But we understand that businesses also need to sell their goods and services, and of course make money. So your marketing budget might feel like it is better spent getting more people to buy than it is in cleaning up your website.

We’d like to suggest that these two things are not divorced from each other.

Your customers care

We carried out some customer research recently, surveying over 1600 members of the public to see if they think about their online carbon footprint.

Perhaps unsurprisingly when we asked them for the most important factors (they could choose up to 3) they care about when shopping online the most important were:

• Price - 62%
• Cost of delivery - 48%
• Range of products - 42%
• Speed of delivery - 41%

Basically, we want what we want at a price that’s right as fast as possible. Just 9% cared about the carbon footprint of the website, and 10% cared about the carbon footprint of delivery.

But when we then got them to think about their carbon footprint, and consider the size of the impact of the Internet on the environment things looked a bit different. Price and speed still reigned supreme but the carbon footprint of the site became more important, and it gained ground from price and delivery concerns.

At the end of the survey this is what we saw:

• Price - 55%
• Cost of delivery - 40%
• Range of products - 34%
• Speed of delivery - 31%

But now 25% said they cared about the carbon footprint of the website, with 27% caring about the carbon impact of delivery.

So when people have it in their mind they suddenly care about it.

And guess what?

• 70% of customers surveyed said they would choose a greener version of a brand website if offered
• 63% of customers said they would choose another brand over their initial choice if the alternative brand had a greener website.

And with climate change, carbon emissions, and ethical choices in consumption becoming bigger concerns with more media coverage, customers will have this in their mind more and more in the future.

Do you want to be a brand that leads the way? Or one that has to play catch up?