I’m trying something a little new this week. I’ve included my reading of this post as a listening option if you prefer to consume your content that way.
It was one take with all imperfections included - so you may hear me stumble over my words or some background noise.
As a perfectionist, I love a good gold standard to chase. Just tell me the concrete carbon or kilobyte number to hit and I’ll do it.
Or show me the greenest website you’ve ever seen and I’ll do it better. I’m sure there’s something they missed that can be tweaked.
But this mindset is not good or helpful when it comes to designing green websites. There’s nuance and strategy and a lot of gray area.
Technically the greenest website is the one that doesn’t exist. Which isn’t particularly helpful.
Side note, every time I say or read that sentiment I always think of the Sex-Ed episode of The Office and hear Darryl in my head saying:
“What's the safest way to go skiing? Don't ski.”
And he’s not wrong. But like the greenest website conundrum, it’s not helpful.
Okay - back to the main question here: if I was giving out the award for the greenest website to ever exist, what website would it go to?
The easy answer is:
The first website to ever exist
Yep, just like most things, sequels are worse than the original. The first website set the trend and we all just got worse from there.
This beauty was published on August 6, 1991. It was not preserved in its original form, so this is the 1992 version.
The first ever website was this simple document of just black text on a white background and with the beautiful blue and underlined links. It clocks in at 4.6 kilobytes in size and, according to the Website Carbon Calculator, emits 0g of CO2 and is greener than 100% of other web pages tested.
Neat, right?
While this could be a gold standard to look to, before you go and delete 99% of your website, I want to talk about the problems with chasing this small of a file size.
And if you’re thinking I’m talking shit about the first ever website, I absolutely am not! The internet had to start somewhere and this is a perfect reflection of the time it was created in. But if you made this website in 2023, you’d get laughed off the web.
Let’s face it: this website is ugly
There’s not any way around this one. This website is not pretty, it’s not interesting to look at, and it would not instill trust in an audience.
Is that its fault? Not at all. Way back when the web started, all they had to use was HTML.
HTML is the structure that makes the page. It’s the paragraphs, the headings, the bullets, the divs, the building blocks to a site.
What makes a site beautiful is CSS. CSS tackles the fonts, the colors, the padding and margins, all the stuff that makes our websites different from each other.
This site is only HTML. All the styling is default, right down to the blue, underlined links.
That’s why this website is so tiny. Not because the developer did some black magic, but because this was all they had to work with and by default, every website was going to be small in file size.
The site also uses no images. Back in the mid-90’s when websites were starting to pop up on the web, images were considered cutting edge.
Now it’s rare to see a site without images.
So could we all create websites that look like this? That only use HTML?
Technically, yes, we could. There’s nothing stopping us.
But we shouldn’t.
Look I love a good, green website as much as the next green-design-nerd but I also love beautiful, stunning, stop-you-right-in-your-tracks websites. The ones you get immersed in. The ones you can’t help but share with all your other design friends.
Even if they’re not the greenest, they have value. We can learn something from them.
If I landed on that first ever website looking to hire someone for a service or to learn something about a topic, I’d hit the back button as fast as I could. Doesn’t seem like a very reputable source with a website like that.
For all I know, though, a website that looks like that could have the best information on the web. And I would overlook it from judging it by its design.
Is that wrong? I don’t know but it’s human.
Whether we like it or not, design instills trust. If someone took the time to make their website look nice, or hired someone to help them, we feel like they are more trustworthy. They took the time and care and they probably did the same with the information.
And of course this isn’t always true, either. People put bad information on beautiful sites all the time.
But I digress.
Green design takes balance.
We have to take sustainability and beauty into account. If people are immediately clicking away from our websites, if our websites are not converting, even if we have the greenest website to have ever existed, that’s a true waste of a website.
A bloated, high-carbon-emitting site that converts is better than a low-carbon site that everyone bounces from. Maybe a hot take. But at least it’s serving its purpose. It exists for a reason and it’s hitting the goals that were set for it.
We also have to take accessibility into account. HTML in its default values are accessible. Colors have sufficient contrast, links show up separately and with underlines to help distinguish them more. Alt text lives in HTML.
It was created with accessible design in mind.
We all go and ruin it with our fancy CSS styles. We use colors that don’t have enough contrast. Typefaces that are hard to read. Underline things that aren’t links and shouldn’t be underlined.
But of course we can have it all: sustainability, beauty, and accessibility.
So if I was actually giving out an award for the greenest site on the web, what site would it go to?
I have absolutely no idea. There’s too many choices.
But it definitely wouldn’t go to the first ever website. It wouldn’t work by today’s standards and I refuse to believe we haven’t gotten better since that first website.
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. Investment: $300 USD. Payment plans available!
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!