In a perfect world, we all want our website to have a low digital carbon footprint. Along with feeling guilty about using a diesel car, gas heating and AI, the looming sense that you are doing more harm than good to the planet doesn’t stop with your website. Thankfully, reducing the carbon load of your website isn’t as daunting as it sounds.

Especially for charities and purpose-driven organisations, their website is more than a marketing channel, it’s a statement of intent. Charities are rightly held to a higher standard. Supporters, funders, and partners expect consistency between mission and behaviour. You have to walk the walk if you talk the talk and there’s a growing expectation that the platforms you choose reflect your values as well as your goals.

Every website has a digital carbon footprint. The best part is that if you’re building on Umbraco, you already have a strong foundation for creating a more sustainable site.

Sustainability isn’t a trade-off. Done well, it improves not only performance, but also long-term value. Here are five priorities (in order!) for achieving a more sustainable website, and feeling generally better about your carbon footprint.

Choose renewable-powered hosting

The biggest single impact. If you only do one from this list, make it this one.

Your website runs on servers in data centres that consume energy 24/7. Choosing a hosting provider powered by 100% renewable energy can significantly reduce your carbon footprint (who knew?!).

You’ve probably heard already about the looming presence of AI-specific data centres. Well we shouldn't forget about the thousands of websites being hosted too. Here at Yoyo, we offer a Green Hosting package, which can host your site on renewable energy.

Continuing the good news, Umbraco is hosting-agnostic, meaning it works equally well with green hosting providers, it’s almost like we’ve given this some thought!

Keep pages lightweight with smarter images

Less data, faster pages. This is hopefully not a surprise to you!

Videos and what I will refer to as “heavy” images are the largest contributor to page weight (the amount of data a page needs to load). Another tick for Umbraco is that it supports modern image formats like WebP, which deliver the same visual quality with much smaller file sizes.

We also implement logic where our sites automatically serve the right image size for the user’s screen. This means that mobile devices don’t download massive desktop images, etc. With the majority of traffic coming through mobile devices these days, less data = faster pages, lower energy use, lower carbon footprint.

Build lean with purposeful features

Only load what you actually need.

Umbraco’s modular approach allows you to include only the features your organisation genuinely uses. Some other CMS platforms, one in particular that rhymes with “Word Dress”, tend to rely heavily on plugins to add simple functionality. Over time, this can quietly build and build and result in extra code being loaded on every page.

Cleaner builds mean browsers and devices don’t have to work as hard, reducing energy use while keeping the site fast and responsive.

Simplify journeys, not just pages

Efficiency helps users and the planet.

Every extra click and page load has a cost. If you don’t have your user journey’s down to a tee, there can be hundreds if not thousands of necessary clicks and page loads, just to get a user where they want to be. Umbraco makes it easy to structure content clearly, helping users reach key actions, for instance, donating or finding support, in fewer steps. Less clicks = less energy used.

This improves conversion rates and reduces unnecessary data transfer at the same time. Better UX and sustainability naturally go together.

Future-proof your website

Sustainable over the long term.

A sustainable website isn’t just efficient today, with the right things in place, it’s easy to maintain tomorrow. Umbraco’s clean content structure means updates, campaigns, and new sections can be added without rebuilding or bolting on heavy plugins, like some other platforms…

That longevity reduces rework, redevelopment, and digital waste over time, all while keeping your site adaptable as you evolve.

Building a low-carbon website doesn’t require compromise. With Umbraco, sustainability and performance are designed to work together!