One of my greatest passions, besides helping clients like you to achieve unmatched results online, is in educating and driving awareness about taking care of our planet. In today’s totally technologically connected world, I believe that the companies that are going to succeed the most are the ones that put planet and people before profits.
There are multitudes of ways that you can contribute positively towards helping care for the environment. And one of those is with Green Hosting? What? Green technology for hosting? Yes, eco-friendly hosting also known as green hosting is a website hosting service that uses green technologies to reduce or eliminate the impact of the service it offers.
Does it really make a difference? Again, the answer is yes. The constant use of power servers and related equipment by web hosting providers uses a significant amount of energy. As a matter of fact, a recent study by McKinsey & Co. indicates that by the year 2020, pollution caused by data centers will exceed that of even the airline industry! One of the best ways for you to reduce your carbon footprint is to choose a web hosting provider that uses green dedicated servers; or servers powered by a renewable energy source such as geothermal energy.
Going green can offer several benefits to you, with the most noteworthy one being goodwill and your ability showcase your ethical stance to your customers. With tens of millions of active websites hosted on servers around the world, your ability to implement green hosting not only saves on your bottom line, it can also help you develop a deeper connection with your nature-loving customers, resulting in increased profit, sales and a positive contribution to your balance sheet.
Environmental friendly hosting companies we recommend:
A2 Hosting
FatCow
HostPapa
Other factors to consider:
Slow websites use more Energy – as surprising as it may be, it’s true that slower websites use more energy. Not to mention that 50 percent or more of your customers may abandon a website that loads slowly (or take more than three seconds to load.) In addition, if you are trying to optimize your website for organic search, a slow load will lower your domain authority and page-ranking in google. So speeding up your load time not only gives you better SEO, it also helps save energy. Some things you can do to speed up your site and curtail the energy drain are: enabling browser catching, optimizing images, reducing HTTP requests and reducing the code used.
Opt for a Low-Power Color Palette – different screen colors use variable amounts of energy on different platforms. Believe it or not the good old boxy CRT monitors are more energy efficient than the high end LCD and LED monitors available today. As a website owner or digital marketer, you can incorporate more white hues in your website design to save energy over the long term.
Adopting green technologies is relatively easy, and doesn’t require a tear down of your current website setup so speak to your interactive marketing agency today about going green.