Gehen Sie zum Hauptinhalt

Let’s create a fairer internet
more responsible and respectful

Reducing the environmental footprint of its website: what is the implementation for the DECOREC website?

Think before you act, evaluate the usefulness and question the added value of your actions: these are the keys to reducing the ecological footprint of your website.

The objective: to limit digital fat, i.e. to avoid deploying useless and resource-consuming functionalities that weigh down the pages, slow down navigation and encourage the user to change hardware frequently… for nothing.

Discover in detail what DECOREC has achieved.

Assessing usefulness

The greatest leverage for reducing impacts is at the design stage, when the real need is defined.


Usefulness cannot be decreed, it must be constructed and thought through.


To define the need, we focused on the action that the Internet user wishes to perform when visiting the DECOREC site. The design objective, then, is to make the user’s path more fluid in order to help him or her carry out this action.

Limiting the user’s mental load

A site that focuses on what is useful has simple, clear and accessible content. The information is useful and easy to find.

This also benefits the content producer: his workload is lightened!

Fighting against programmed obsolescence

A website with a small footprint limits the need for the latest terminals to navigate.

Frequently renewing machines has a strong social impact. Machines require rare, non-renewable metals. Their extraction is often linked to poor working conditions, child labour, maintenance of dubious political systems, local pollution, destruction of biotopes, etc.

Reducing power consumption

The equation is simple: a lighter site means fewer requests and therefore fewer flows. The latter are also lighter!

Use energy that is 100% renewable

Choosing a hosting company like Infomaniak reduces the footprint of your site. The energy requirements of this host are higher than the market standards. The company is committed, for example, to extending the life of its servers to 15 years. It has also received the 2019 Ecological Transition Trophy and the Ambition Negawatt Trophy. It is also recognised for its strong social policy.
 

As we have just seen, reducing the ecological footprint of one’s site contributes to limiting the impact of global warming, reducin gCO2-eq emissions and respecting people.

How DECOREC eco-designed its website?

Angle Web and Cyclop Éditorial’s support for the eco-design of the DECOREC website

DECOREC knows its market well. Angle Web and Cyclop Éditorial assisted the company with the web communication aspects: the usefulness of the project, presentation of information – tree structure and writing -, technical choices -ux, ui –

A co-constructed project


This co-construction work allows DECOREC to develop know-how and skills, to acquire new reflexes and to grow in maturity in order to:

  • inscribe all its actions in a vision of utility and limit the non-essential,
  • ensure the added value of its actions,
  • master the best practices of digital sobriety.

From this collective intelligence emerges a unique tree structure that reflects the uniqueness of DECOREC.
 

On the content side


The content is structured to simplify the user experience. The number of pages is limited.

The information is presented in such a way as to facilitate rapid reading.

The information is distributed in such a way as to avoid animations, for example carousels: they weigh down the page without adding value.

The site is designed without news: they can be taken over by social networks. This reduces the workload of the content producer.

On the web development side

Care is taken with each page to:

  • limit its complexity, its weight and the number of requests necessary to display it.
  • avoid animations that do not provide any added value,
  • promote access to content for people with physical, cognitive and mental disabilities by applying accessibility rules.

The use of cookies is limited. The Matomo tool enables visits to be counted without tracing visitors.

On the Visual and graphic side

The graphic work serves the content and its objectives.

In the pages, it is the usefulness that determines the presence or not of images. Their weight is optimised.

Many benefits for the company

The site is faster and more efficient: its bounce rate is reduced. The passage to action is facilitated.

And we prove it with the EcoIndex

The EcoIndex is a community tool that evaluates, for a given page:

  • its environmental performance:
    • absolute with a score out of 100
    • relative with a grade from A to G
  • its technical footprint:
    • internet users (page complexity)
    • networks (weight)
    • servers (number of request)
  • its environmental footprint:
    • greenhouse gas emissions
    • fresh water consumption

Old website under Wordpress

Example of impact for the year 2021 and the homepage in French and English :

  • Greenhouse gas emission :
    12 kgCO2-eq
  • Fresh water consumption : 
    169 l

EcoIndex grades

Number of pages per grade EcoIndex

19 pages Ecoindex C, 14 pages Ecoindex D et 1 page Ecoindex E

New eco-designed website

Example of impact for the year 2021, with the same figures as the old version:

  • Greenhouse gas emission
    42 % reduction
    7 kgCO2-eq
  • Fresh waterconsumption
    39 % reduction
    103 l

EcoIndex grades

Number of pages per grade EcoIndex

42 pages Ecoindex A

Creating useful websites that respect your visitors, control their environmental impact and support your objectives.

Die Website wurde von Angle Web und Cyclop Editorial umweltgerecht gestaltet, um ihren ökologischen Fußabdruck zu verringern. Entdecken Sie die Vorteile von Web-Ökodesign