With no big, bright physical stores to power, there's a common perception that ecommerce brands' operational carbon footprint must be low. The lack of a bricks and mortar presence is an undeniable energy saving, but it's important for ecommerce brands to acknowledge the very real impact of an online store in terms of CO2 emissions.
Read on to learn more about the carbon cost of your ecommerce store, and explore three ways that your ecommerce business can start to reduce it.
The Carbon Cost of Ecommerce
As online retailers, we may not be running physical stores, but the data centres that power our busy, product-packed websites are power-hungry, very real and rarely run on renewable energy. Factor in the energy requirements of transition networks and the end-user devices used to view our ecommerce stores, and the cumulative carbon count quickly starts to climb.
Of course, this is before we've even considered the impact of our digital marketing efforts and internal communication. Transmission of data is a fairly significant factor in terms of pollution, [contributing to 4% of our greenhouse gas emission]
If you're curious about your own store's carbon footprint, face the music using a tool such as WebsiteCarbon. That should get you sufficiently fired up to take action – and here are three great ways to get started, beyond the operational impact of your store's website...
1. Educate your customers about the impact of their choices
A great way to start to tackle the overall carbon footprint of your ecommerce business is to focus on the behaviours of your end-user – your customer. If better, greener habits are encouraged here, they can quickly scale across multiple purchases. People do tend to care about their carbon footprint - they just might need a gentle reminder at times!
Returns are a huge issue when it comes to carbon emissions. Not only are goods needlessly transported for greater distances, returned products are often disposed of rather than resold. Highlight this fact to your customers through well-worded messaging.
For example, if someone is buying multiple sizes of the same item, the assumption can be made that they intend to return all but one - could your checkout process recognise and flag this behaviour? Could you produce better sizing guides or point customers towards reviews that discuss fit in more detail? Would an AI-powered fitting platform such as Fit Analytics be a possibility?
With regard to shipping, could messaging be put in place to highlight the extra carbon cost of next day delivery - do they really need their item the next day, or would they be happy to wait and make a more climate-friendly choice? If they do require expedited delivery, maybe they would like to round up to offset the additional carbon cost?
2. Integrate an offsetting app into your checkout experience
Some carbon emissions are inevitable when it comes to ecommerce fulfilment, and while reduction at source is always preferable to mitigating real damage done, carbon offsetting can be a good solution for the "necessary evils" that will arise.
Carbon offsetting apps have seen a big rise in popularity within the Shopify space over recent years, and you'll find many options on the App store. There's a really broad range of functionality across these solutions, and many focus on bringing enhancement and added value to your customer experience - great news for planet and profit.
As a carbon-neutral platform, it's no surprise that Shopify offers their own option, Offset, and it should also be noted that customers making purchases via the Shop app will have their delivery automatically offset. Factor in their commitment to offset all BFCM delivery emissions and Shopify really are leading from the front here.
If you're looking for a solution that helps ensure some of the good you do is felt locally, then CarbonClick's unique “blended basket” approach to carbon offsets might be of interest.
3. Consider Your Digital Carbon Footprint
Remember that it's also important to consider the physical impact of your digital decisions! As we mentioned at the start of this article, data carries a carbon cost, so taking steps to make sure this is minimised wherever possible will all add up.
From less energy-intensive websites (OrganicBasics have really set the standard here), through to a more mindful approach to electronic communications and digital marketing, there are a lot of positive steps you can take to become a less resource-intensive business.
Grab a coffee and stick this MindfulCommerce podcast on; CarbonClick takes to the mic to discuss the various ways that e-commerce merchants and their customers can offset their carbon footprint and why it's so important.
Rise to the challenge – lower your emissions
As a Shopify merchant, you've already built your ecommerce business upon climate-friendly foundations. But there's always more we can do – and it's increasingly vital that we take this kind of positive action; for people, planet and profit.
Inspired to take action? Check out The MindfulCommerce Directory and The MindfulCommerce Community for free support with becoming a more sustainable and environmentally friendly ecommerce brand.
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1. Accessibility
Using well written and descriptive alt text for your images makes it easier for people with visual impairments to navigate non-text content on your site.
When using assistive technology, like a screen reader, the alt text is read out loud to the user, giving them a clear understanding of what the image is depicting.
(all the images in this post have alt text added to them! Check it out!)
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Alt tags are also extremely valuable when it comes to SEO and how your Shopify store ranks in search engines like Google. When the search engine crawls the content on your site, alt text helps identify relevant content related to the search and provide accurate results.
While we're on the topic, DON'T keyword stuff (using alt text to cram as many relevant keywords as you can think of into it). This will end up working against you and will hinder anyone using assisted technology from properly interacting with your site.
Let's take a look at two examples and how to best use alt text in your photos (we'll use our dogs because dogs make everything better):
Okay:
Better:
Best:
Okay:
Better:
Best:
3. Functionality
When an image fails to load for any reason, the browser will show a broken image and the alt text will load to still be able to get an idea of what the page is about. Images may not load for multiple reasons, so ensuring your images always have alt text is kind for ensuring your users can read and understand your content in all technological situations.
4. Social Media
Did you know that most of the social media platforms you use give you the ability to add alt text?
Facebook, Instagram & Twitter all provide the ability to add alt text to your images and you should. For example on Twitter if an image *has* alt text on Twitter it will indicate that...
Taking the extra moments to ensure that your images have proper alt text to them helps out users who are searching for your content and helps the social media platforms surface your content easier.
Alt Text - Further Reading
Shopify has a wonderful considerations when writing alt text article, Content King has a great guide on Image SEO that includes a lot on alt text, and of course Mozilla has a great authoritative piece on the semantics and accessibility of alt text that's a really worthwhile read.
Learn more about how to add alt text to your product media in the Shopify admin and also through the Theme Editor, or reach out to our team to help you optimize your images for best results.
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1) Unofficial Shopify Podcast, hosted by Kurt Elster
“How's an entrepreneur like me supposed to grow my Shopify store?” That's what The Unofficial Shopify Podcast aims to answer. Discover new opportunities to grow your store from the world’s most successful Shopify entrepreneurs. Hosted by Kurt Elster, a senior ecommerce consultant and Shopify Plus Partner, The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is not authorized, endorsed, or sponsored by Shopify– It's a no holds barred discussion of ecommerce growth strategy & tactics.
(Our own Anne Thomas was recently a guest on the podcast, chatting with Kurt about what every merchant should know abou theme development - check it out!)
Listen on Apple Podcasts
2) Commerce Tea, hosted by Kelly Vaughn and Rhian Beutler
Commerce is changing faster than ever before. That’s why we started Commerce Tea, a podcast to help you keep up with what’s happening in the industry.
We’re your hosts, Kelly Vaughn, CEO and founder of Shopify Plus agency The Taproom, and Rhian Beutler, COO and co-founder of the Shopify app company venntov.
You’ll learn tips and tricks for growing and scaling your online store, hear from top experts in the industry, and be inspired by stories from successful entrepreneurs. Grab a mug and join us every Tuesday morning to talk shop.
Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts
3) Bad for Business, hosted by Vivian Kaye + Founders Fund
The Bad for Business podcast uncovers the real unfiltered stories behind the success of unconventional, disruptive and down right Bad for Business entrepreneurs.
Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts
4) Shopify Masters, hosted by Felix Thea
Each week, our host Felix Thea invites successful entrepreneurs to share their experience and practical advice for growing an online business on Shopify. Guests on the show come from a wide range of backgrounds and share insight into topics such as creating viral Facebook ads, outsourcing parts of your business, creating licensed products, running a newsworthy pop-up shop, optimizing your social media marketing, content marketing for SEO, and tons more.
These are seasoned entrepreneurs that come from diverse backgrounds who are willing to pull back the curtain and share their best practical advice.
5) The Mindful Commerce Podcast, hosted by Krissie Claire + Rich Bunker
This is not your average podcast. This podcast is for mindful e-commerce entrepreneurs who want to make a difference in the world.
We discuss the role of e-commerce and how it can be improved to better protect our natural world. We will chat openly and honestly to leaders in e-commerce: brands, merchants, tech solutions, web agencies and freelancers who are on a journey to make change.
We have an opportunity, through education and awareness to influence shoppers, merchants, tech developers and associated industries to be mindful of our environment, social impact and reduce demand on natural resources.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Transistor
6) Shopify Across the Pond, hosted by Blend Commerce
Shopify across the pond is a 100% Shopify related podcast, focused on bringing the latest news, development, and discussion on Shopify for UK based Shopify merchants. Each month, we'll bring an episode with a key member of the Shopify community to discuss apps, strategies, and processes aimed at helping you launch, grow and automate your Shopify business.
Listen on Simplecast | Apple Podcasts
This is just a sample of the amount of Shopify Podcasts that are out there and where we turn for more ecommerce knowledge and information about the Shopify ecosystem. Itching for more? Shopify has a great list of 21 business podcasts to continue learning!
]]>Shopify has rolled out their Online Speed Scores report across all merchant stores and understandably it sent store owners into a frenzy. And why wouldn’t it - seeing “your store is performing slower than most Shopify stores” certainly *sounds* like reason for panic, right?
Well, not really, if we're being real here. In an episode of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast about these scores, our friend Kurt Elster breaks down the value of these speed results and how Gymshark, a Shopify Plus merchant and success story recently valued in the billions of dollars, has a speed score of 6. S-I-X.
See - we told you not to panic :)
Your store's speed can directly affect your store's conversions. According to Walmart, they found that for every 1 second improvement in page load time, conversions increased by 2%. Also your site's speed is a part of Google's algorithm at this point and they even have tools available to measure your pages speed. Google's crawlers also primarily crawl the web on mobile now so ensuring that your site is fast for mobile devices is the goal.
All this isn't to say website speed isn't important, because of course it is. Making sure you're diligent about things like image sizes, lazy loading images, app overload, videos, javascript frameworks and much more goes a long way to ensuring your Shopify store loads as quickly as possible. And using benchmarks like your page load time, and page size, are much more valuable metrics in terms of your site's performance.
Page speed also has an affect your SEO (search engine optimization) rankings, but does having a 100/100 score in a Lighthouse report or the new Shopify reports mean top rankings? Not quite.
While page speed can affect your site, it’s not the only SEO factor. Ensuring that you're satisfying the user’s intent and having the right content makes much more of an impression, rather than striving for the elusive 100/100 score.
In your Shopify admin, under Online Store --> Themes there's a section that shows your score with a bit of information on what affects your score.
Or you can head to the Online Store Speed score directly by going to this URL by replacing YOURSTORE with the name of your store -
https://YOURSTORE.myshopify.com/admin/reports/online_store_speed
and there you can view the report yourself to see what your current score is and how it's changed over time.
There are a lot of resources out there to learn about page speed and how to help yours along, it get overwhelming.
- You can test your page speed yourself with the Shopify Performance Analyzer
- Shopify's own site on Improving Your Speed Score
- Shopify Blog on Shopify Performance Improvements
The Shop Critique team is here to assist you with understanding your store's speed and offer best practices for increasing performance, conversions and your SEO long term.
]]>You can check out Shopify’s ecommerce blog for inspiration and advice for your own store and for your store’s blog.
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