Sustainable web design in the e-commerce sector : Evaluation and proposed improvement of existing guidelines

Abstract: In recent years, the web development industry has made websites more sustainable through green hosting and sustainable approaches in both back-end and front-end levels of websites. This study evaluates and aims to improve existing guidelines for designing lower-impact websites in the e-commerce sector. First, the study investigates the Internet users’ awareness of the Internet’s carbon footprint and their impressions of existing lower-impact websites. This data is then used to construct and conduct focus groups. The Internet’s impact on the environment and existing lower-impact website solutions are further analysed and dis-cussed in the grocery e-commerce context. These findings are then used as a base to build a lower-impact grocery e-commerce website prototype and test it with users and evaluate its attractiveness based on a hedonic/pragmatic model. The study reveals that users are pretty acceptive of the front-end changes to a website to make it more sustainable and willing to change their online habits. However, as current user awareness and knowledge about the Internet’s carbon footprint is very low, any changes to the User Experience (UX) of a website to make it more sustainable need to be communicated to the user.