Using Carbon Emission Data to Make Better Business Decisions
Turning data into action, a case study
This is the story of how Digital Carbon Online was used to significantly reduce one websites’s carbon emissions.
At the moment the only real way to have a zero emission website is not to have one. However, for nearly all businesses nowadays this is not a very good plan.
For the vast majority of businesses, a website is now a necessity and with that comes carbon emissions. The role of Digital Carbon Online is to help businesses understand which pages are generating the most carbon emissions and therefore which pages need to be most optimised.
This is exactly what happened with one user.
Spotting a problem
The user noticed that carbon emissions were increasing significantly, despite web visitors remaining relatively constant.
Using Digital Carbon Online’s reporting capabilities the user discovered that the increase in emissions was being caused by one specific page.
The page in question was a legacy blog article that included several unoptimised images of products that were no longer available.
Investigating further, using other tools, the increase in traffic to this page seemed to be originating from an article on a well-visited third-party site. However, the link form that site to theirs was irrelevant and off-topic.
The user weighed up the business value of traffic to this page versus the carbon emission.
Action
The business value of traffic to this page was considered very low, yet the carbon impact was high.
Also, given the fact visitors were landing on a forgotten web page that provided information that was now out of date, there was an additional risk that users were being confused and receiving a poor experience of their website and brand.
As such the user decided to simply remove the page and redirect visitors to a more relevant, lower-carbon footprint page.
Result
The result was an immediate reduction in their overall website carbon emissions with zero impact to their business.
Conclusion
Without continuously monitoring their website the user would not have been able to notice the rapid increase in website carbon emissions.
Digital Carbon Online provided information that enabled the user to make an informed business decision that they simply would not have been able to make without the carbon emission data.
The user’s website is now emitting less carbon while also providing a more relevant experience to visitors.
Book a personal demo today, and discover how measuring the carbon footprint of your entire website could improve your business.
