People today are open to new experiences when it comes to travel. This means that travel tastes have changed in recent years. Today, people are willing to spend more money on a single holiday if it’s worth it.
This is sweet music to the ears of travel website owners. With the growth of internet users predicted to grow by + 10% each year, as stated by the UN, the whole world might get access to the internet.
Surprisingly, using your computer or smartphone to browse has a significant impact on nature. Every time a user loads a web page, it releases 20 milligrams of CO2 per second. This is why most developers strive to create environmental sustainability websites for travel customers. This post will highlight the 4 best practices to create a sustainable travel website.
1. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Customers generally access travel websites from different parts of the world. The speed of your website is greatly affected by the location of the user, relative to the webserver. The longer the distance between the two, the longer the data being transmitted has to travel.
Since more complex websites emit more milligrams of CO2 per second, using CDN helps cache content across multiple and strategically placed locations. Although CDN will increase the cost of operation, it speeds up your travel website and in return, saves the environment.
2. Make Things Easy to Find
Travellers are like any other internet users, and the longer it takes to find something on the website, the easier it is for them to jump to the next travel site. Even with a sustainable graphic design, a complicated website frightens off users.
The easier it is to find content, the fewer the pages a user will have to load. This means that fewer server requests are made, which makes the website friendly to the environment and easy for users.
For instance, web designers can avoid creating a navigational bar with its personal space. Instead, they can utilize transparency and integrate the navigation bar within the images. Eventually, the website will have a light interface and attract even those who hate to travel.
3. Optimize Performance
A good number of travel websites make use of full-screen images to appeal to their customers. While this is a good strategy, it slows down the web speed and hence affect sustainability.
So what should a good website have to increase performance? When a site runs efficiently, it uses less processing power, hence has a lower carbon footprint. You can still retain the full-screen images but reduce server response time.
When your DNS takes too long to look up, the speed of your website is highly affected. Faster DNS providers help optimize the performance of your site as they reduce the period it takes browsers to get a hold of your website.
A good host will also help optimize the performance of your website. If you intend to change your medium-sized travel website into a big site, then you need to avoid shared hosting and consider VPS hosting. Not only is VPS hosting for web developers reliable but has a great reputation for speed and outstanding up-time record.
4. Optimize Image Sizes
A good web design is easy to capture the attention of travellers. This is why 80% of modern travel websites are filled with beautiful and high-quality pictures. Outstanding dashboard design for a website makes use of stunning visual design with a clear layout of images.
To achieve this, web designers should pick the right image format to optimize file sizes and still keep the image quality. If you don’t need the image transparency (alpha layers) offered by PNG, you can use JPG as it offers small file sizes. Additionally, web owners can use the different tools available to reduce the weights of images as a way of optimizing a travel website’s speed.
With that said, the tips mentioned above will not only speed up your website but make it user-friendly and energy-efficient. However, saving the environment is a collective responsibility. Travel website owners and designers have a role to play in ensuring that the environment is clean. Stakeholders too, including hosting companies, should use renewable sources of energy.
Featured Photo © Roberto Nickson on Unsplash
Author Bio:
Emily Lamp is a freelance writer, working closely with many aspiring thinkers and entrepreneurs from various companies. She is also interested in travel lifestyle and loves sharing her travel experiences through her writing.
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