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The environmental benefits of privacy-focussed web design

Arguably two of the biggest problems in the web design industry today are the environmental impact of our online activities and the harvesting and misuse of our personal data.

In reality, these two issues are directly linked.

The tracking and storing of data requires a massive amount of infrastructure and energy. If we can reduce the number of tracking scripts on the web, we can not only be more responsible when it comes to data privacy, we can directly reduce the environmental impact of our online activities.

In this article, well look at some of the most invasive trackers being used almost as standard across business websites, explore some of the more ethical alternatives, and ask whether we can still make insights-based decisions without harvesting personal data&

Google Analytics trackers are featured on 72.6% of the top 75,000 websites. Its location tracker Global Site Tag is used on 4.7 million sites, and Universal Analytics on a further 3.18 million sites.
Facebook collects more data from outside its ecosystem than from within it, with the Meta Pixel tracker present on 30% of the top 100,000 websites.
Cookie technology on the top 1 million websites generates more than 11,500 tonnes of carbon emissions every month.
Amazon allows third-party cookies from more than 80 companies, ranging from Facebook to mobile gaming giant King.
Email pixels, which can be used to detect if and when an email has been opened, what device has been used, and details about the recipients location, are present in more than two thirds of all emails.

The use of tracking scripts is now so widespread that it has been described as endemic. Aside from the ethics of these practices, the problem from a sustainable web design perspective is how much these scripts slow a website down, and how much more carbon they produce.

Each tracker is a file that sits in the shadows of a site and requires loading with the page. Even those do you want to accept cookies notifications that pop up need to load extra files to work, adding to the weight of web pages and generating more emissions in the process.

Trying to browse the internet without having to cede your personal data to the highest bidder has become a real challenge.

Even the smallest of business websites now seems to have cookie popups simultaneously telling us they value your privacy while harvesting data about who we are, where we are, what were looking for and what we were doing online before we landed there.

Tracking scripts have become so pervasive that they have effectively become an industry standard, and most businesses deploy them not only without question, but without consideration of what it means for customer privacy.

For years, companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon have been dishing out free software for people to use on their websites. These third-party scripts have provided website owners with a host of amazing functionality, ranging from analytics to video embeds and maps, often with the addition of only a single line of code. But these business behemoths arent charities, and their free tools have come at a price: consumer privacy.

Not only do many of these tracking scripts pass user data back to the third-party company that provided it, they pass it on to any other partner they are in cahoots with.

Some of the most common web trackers include:

Google Analytics Tracks visits to a website, including information about where a visitor has come from (i.e. search, social media channels), where they have landed, how long they have spent on your site and which page they left. But it goes beyond these useful measurements to collect data about demographics, personal interests and affinity categories which are then fed back to Google.
Meta Pixel (formerly Facebook Pixel) Tracks user behaviour and actions on a website including page views, product views, adding to basket, purchases, links clicked, etc. and uses it for targeted advertising, including for other companies. Pixel is installed on so many sites that Meta actually harvests more data from outside its social platform than it does from within it.
Google reCAPTCHA Ostensibly a security-focussed script aimed at identifying and preventing bot activity, this invasive software collects a mind-boggling amount of user data. Among other things, it harvests IP addresses, Google user account information, behaviour on the page (such as typing patterns, scrolling, mouse movements, time spent completing forms, etc.), browser history and information about browser plug-ins.
Amazon trackers As well as all the masses of data Amazon collects through its own-branded platforms, services and devices, it harvests data through tracking scripts installed on other websites, often through adverts or affiliate links.
YouTube embeds Embedding videos on to your website might appear to improve the user experience, but it also gives YouTube access to their data. When visitor hits play on an embedded video, YouTube starts collecting data about views, where people are watching from and how long they are watching for.
Social media feeds Social media can be an important tool for businesses, but the companies behind them are notorious data-gatherers. Adding a social feed to your website gives those companies access to your prospects, drawing them away from your website (bad for business) and exposing them to data collection (bad for individuals).
Ads There are numerous ways advertisers can collect user data on the performance of ad campaigns, including through tracking URLs, tracking scripts, pixels and cookies. Using these trackers on your website gives ad companies access to user data on everything from views and clicks to their behaviour across multiple sessions and websites.

Theres no doubting that website analytics are a useful business tool. They let you measure traffic to your website and identify how people are engaging with your content, and this can help you make improvements to your both your website and your marketing.

Fathom Analytics measures your website’s page views without tracking your visitors personal data.

Here at Root, as an eco-friendly web design agency, we believe one of the best ways of reducing the carbon impact of a website is by implementing a considerate content strategy that prioritises quality over quantity. Analytics are key to this, because it means businesses can be more purposeful about their content. They can get rid of the content that gets no views, better target more useful questions, and bring down the overall size and emissions of their site.

But analysing your website traffic doesnt need to come at the expense of your visitors privacy. These ethical alternatives will give you all the insights you need to make informed improvements:

Fathom Analytics – This privacy-focussed analytics software is the ethical alternative to Google Analytics. It measures page views, time on site, bounce rate and goal completions alongside referral channels and link clicks, but without tracking the personal data of website visitors.
Buttondown – Email is one of a businesss best marketing tools, and Buttondown is one of the best privacy-focussed providers of newsletter software. Run by a single person who values digital privacy, Buttondown doesnt collect any data about you or your subscribers, and doesnt track opens or clicks. Trust is at the heart of an email newsletter, and this software makes that easy to uphold.
Mave.io – As a low-carbon web design studio, wed always advise against embedding video content directly into your website because of the impact on page-load speed and consequent emissions. But if youre looking for an ethical alternative to YouTube, mave.io is a fantastic privacy-focussed, EU-based (and GDPR compliant) video building and hosting platform.

Learn more about privacy-focussed software at Below Radar.

The Blacklight Privacy Inspector can help you identify if you have any invasive tracking scripts on your website.

The first step in being able to protect your users data and reduce your websites carbon emissions is knowing what tracking scripts you are using and where. These tools provide a useful starting point for making improvements.

Blacklight – This website privacy inspection tool lets you check what trackers and cookies are installed on your site, and identifies other more intrusive technologies like session recording and key logging. It also lets you know which companies this data is being sent to.
Digital Beacon – This fantastic tool estimates the carbon output of your website using key data on file transfer size, images, fonts and stylesheets. Crucially, it also measures the number of third-party trackers on your site, which, as well as compromising user privacy, add to the carbon footprint. The detailed report gives helpful suggestions about where improvements can be made, and keeps a log each time you test (up to 10) so you can see the impact of any changes over time.
Browser developer tools – Browsers like Firefox and Chrome (or it’s privacy focussed twin Brave) give you access to developer tools while you are viewing a live site, and these can give helpful information about the cookies installed and the files being loaded into a page. Simply go to the page you want to analyse, and navigate to the developer tools either by hitting F12 or navigating through the menu at the top of the browser to More Tools > Web Developer Tools. The Network tab lists all the files, and the Storage tab is where youll find the cookie information.

Here at Root, we believe there needs to be a shift in both the collective mindset and the accepted industry standard for tracking everything we can, just in case it comes in handy one day.

As smaller, ethical businesses, we have a golden opportunity to do things differently and set the tone for a more privacy-focussed future; one thats not only better for our customers, but better for society, better for the planet, and better for businesses.

When youre considering whether to install any piece of tracking software, ask yourself these questions:

Do I actually need to measure this data?
Is this the only way of measuring this metric? For example, do you really need to measure email click-throughs when your website analytics already show page views and referrals?
Do I have the time and skills to spend studying and understanding this data?
If I do, do I also have the necessary skills and resources to action my findings?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, perhaps theres no need to install a tracker.

Consumer trust is arguably as important to a business as the products they sell or the services they deliver, yet few businesses give consideration to how they collect, use and share their customers online data.

The use of unethical, energy-guzzling tracking scripts have become all-pervasive, and we need a shift in thinking that begins to prioritise people, privacy and the planet. In this article, weve spoken about how we can be more thoughtful about the data we collect and how, in doing so, we can better protect our customers and the environment.

Weve looked at how:

Big tech company tracking scripts, which gather a massive amount of data, have become endemic
Website analytics software gathers more customer data than is either ethical or useful
There are ethical alternatives that put privacy first, but provide useful insights
Privacy-focussed data collection can lead to more purposeful business decision-making and more considered content creation
Being more thoughtful about the data we collect can protect our customers and align with our business ethics
Minimising tracking scripts can speed up our websites for a better user experience and a reduced environmental impact
How respecting our customers privacy benefits them, us, the whole of society, and the environment

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Welcome to the IndieWeb

Imagine you post and make new friends on an online network for more than a decade – and suddenly, your account gets suspended for no apparent reason. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Or imagine the online community you were an active part of for years just closes down and all user data gets deleted after a few months. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Or imagine that a site you poured all your thoughts and writing into decides overnight that it might be a good idea to sell access to all user data to a company that is training their large language model with it. And again, there is nothing you can do about it.

Now imagine a place where you actually own your content, your connections, and your online identity.

And now, imagine that this place is your personal website, under your own domain name, under your control.

This is the basic idea behind the IndieWeb.

A Community of Personal Sites

The IndieWeb is a community of independent and personal websites and the people behind those sites creating tools that enable a decentralized, people-focused alternative to the corporate web and its social media silos. Initiated in 2010 by Aaron Parecki, editor of the Webmention and Micropub open web standards, and Tantek Çelik, co-author of microformats, the IndieWeb has grown into an active community with members and followers worldwide.

Events

If you want to get involved, you can attend (or even help to organize) one of the IndieWebCamps, which are regular brainstorming and building events that take place several times a year in the US and Europe. They are a wonderful opportunity to meet like-minded people and work together on community topics and also tinker with your personal site. Typically, an IndieWebCamp will span two days. On the first day, participants learn, share, and discuss ideas and concepts in various sessions. The second day is for creating, hacking, and, at the end of the day, demonstrating what everyone managed to build. It is an exciting and inspiring experience in a very welcoming atmosphere. I’ve been to a few IndieWebCamps (Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Nuremberg) and it was always fantastic!

Another great way to meet people and work on your personal sites together are the Homebrew Website Club meetups that regularly take place in several cities around the globe. See https://events.indieweb.org/ for upcoming events – and don’t hesitate to start something in your city, if you feel like it.

But also if you don’t want or can’t attend in-person events or join the IndieWeb chat, there are many ideas and technologies that have come out of the IndieWeb movement and its underlying principles that are worth checking out.

POSSE

One of the most useful and impactful concepts of the IndieWeb is the idea to publish everything you create on your own site first and then syndicate it elsewhere, also called POSSE. This simple but effective principle allows you to stay in charge of your content and each post‘s canonical URL while also distributing it into the many different social networks and online communities where friends who aren’t part of the IndieWeb or don’t (yet) have a personal site might hang out. And because you ideally always link back to your original post, discovery of your original content is improved as well. You can learn more about the many advantages of POSSE on the IndieWeb wiki: https://indieweb.org/POSSE

Webmention

Another IndieWeb building block that you’ve probably heard of before is the Webmention protocol. Webmentions allow you to collect interactions like comments, likes, reposts, or other responses from various sources and feed them back into your site. How it works is simple: if you link to a website in a post, you can send a Webmention to notify it. If the site supports Webmentions, it may display your post as a reaction. And you can do the same for all sites that send you a Webmention. This way, you can have a conversation from one website to another, sending posts back and forth.

There are also many other promising tools like IndieAuth, which lets you use your own domain to sign in to other sites and services, Micropub, an API for creating, editing, and deleting posts on websites like your own, or WebSub, an open protocol to send and receive notifications when web content – like the feed of a personal website – is updated.

The IndieWeb – For Everyone?

One complaint I frequently hear though when I talk to people about the IndieWeb is that many of its technologies are still not accessible enough to people without a web development background. And there is some truth to that. Despite a growing number of useful plugins, for example for WordPress or Kirby, and a lot of helpful articles and tutorials, e.g. for Eleventy, many of the solutions that the IndieWeb offers are still very much nerd territory. All the more important are projects like the amazing Indiekit by Paul Robert Lloyd, a little Node.js server with all the parts needed to publish content on your personal website and share it on social networks.

The IndieWeb has already been playing a key role in developing many of the tools that make an independent, decentralized network of personal websites possible. This in itself is invaluable. Now it is on all of us to implement more and more of those features into our sites, build even more tools and solutions for the independent web, and help to lower the barrier of entry so that the IndieWeb’s vision of owning your content and online identity will be more accessible to evermore people. Every step we take will change the Web for the better. Because ultimately, the IndieWeb is for everyone.

The next chapter of the IndieWeb awaits and the fight for an independent, open web seems more worthwhile and promising than ever. Tim Berners-Lee once said: “You can make the walled garden very very sweet. But the jungle outside is always more appealing in the long term.”

Let’s make this jungle wild, exciting, and beautiful again.