At Wholegrain we’re currently working on a new platform for our Curiously Green content. We’ll be able to reveal more in due course. For now it’s enough to say that the team have been discussing some interesting concepts and ideas.
A case in point is an idea from senior developer, Tommy, about digital degrowth. This shouldn’t be confused with economic degrowth.
Essentially it boils down to a single question.
“Other than through coding and hosting, what can we do to reduce the energy consumption of a website?”
It’s a question that requires a bit of creativity and a different point of view to answer.
Take a B2B focussed website like Wholegrains for instance. How could we reduce the energy consumption of our site without changing the look, feel and code?
Does wholegraindigital.com work too hard?
While looking at our analytics data I noticed something. Every week the traffic profile is the same. Site visits peak on a Tuesday and then gradually decline through the week. Saturday and Sunday are the lowest traffic days.
Users view business related content during the week, reading about our service offerings, case studies and accessing our contact details. This makes sense, our clients and prospective clients tend to work a 4 or 5 day week, Monday to Friday.
At the weekend this changes. Views of business related pages reduce dramatically. Most weekend page views come from users reading our blog articles.
From a digital degrowth point of view the pages relating to our day to day business aren’t needed at the weekend. They could clock off and enjoy some downtime just like our team does.
Could we give parts of our website the weekend off?
Saturday Night’s Alright (for reading our blog)
What if at a certain time on a Friday night our landing page changed? Users might be greeted by a message saying:
“Hey there. Thanks for coming!
Our main site is closed for the weekend but you are more than welcome to check out our blog. Read about “Business for Good”, “Digital Sustainability” and much more.
See you on Monday!”
Would we lose some conversions through this approach? I’m not sure but some A/B testing would answer that.
Is it technically possible to “close” a website for the weekend? I think our devs could find a way.
Would it make a difference? Maybe! Like all of Digital Sustainability, it’s about checking the data and using our digital platforms more responsibly.
In the coming weeks and months we’ll be using the “Curiously Green” space to explore more ideas like these. We’ll share the results of any experiments we conduct and encourage others to get involved.
Should some websites be a strictly Monday to Friday thing? Let us know your thoughts.