Sustainable Websites: Is Your Online Presence Green Enough with Molly Scanlan | 071

Everybody is talking about the importance of sustainability,

and in particular, in the world of architecture, sustainable building design.

Have you taken a moment to consider how sustainable your website is?

Did you even realise that websites have a carbon footprint too?

And do you have any idea how sustainable your own website is?

I'm joined by Molly Scanlon to learn how to make your digital presence

more sustainable while still looking great in this episode of Architecture

Business Club, the weekly podcast for small firm founders who want to build

their dream business in architecture and enjoy more freedom, flexibility

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Now let's find out how to reduce your digital carbon footprint.

Molly Scanlon builds low carbon websites for social enterprises

and non evil businesses.

She started her first business at 21, put in a valiant stint

as a primary school teacher, and is now a freelance web designer,

developer, writer, and event speaker.

Molly is a frequent podcast guest talking about sustainability and small business

and sharing her twisting career story.

For a useful tip for your business and something else random but equally

interesting, Sign up from Molly's super short weekly email at Molly Gets it done.

Dot com slash signup.

Molly, welcome to Architecture

Business

Club.

could you tell me a bit about what you

like to get up to in your free

time when you're not designing sustainable websites?

Um, well, I have a seven year old, so there's not much free

time, but, um, recently, uh, I've been listening to the Hamilton soundtrack

on repeat, and there are so many business lessons in there, so I've

been, um, making videos for LinkedIn, just sharing some of the wisdom that,

weirdly, a musical about a founding

father has for freelancers and small businesses.

It's

Oh, that's so cool.

I've

I mean, I've heard it's

an

amazing show.

I've not actually been

to see it yet, but you've been to see it, have you?

More than once?

No, it's really expensive.

I've seen it I've seen it in the West End

once, and then

I've watched it on Disney Plus, and then it was, my Spotify

wrapped last year was basically

just the soundtrack album and one other song.

My Spotify raps last year, uh, was basically Judas Priest,

I wouldn't say I'm like a mega fan, but I think I sort of discovered them.

They're not ancient bands, they've been going for like 50 years.

Um, but I just sort of got into them last year and then that was

like, you know, the thing that I

was just listening to on Spotify all the

time.

So,

um, a bit different, the Hamilton soundtrack I would imagine,

but

you know.

it's sometimes just indicative of what

was going on in your life.

So the Spotify wrapped from when my son was under one was like, just a white

noise track, like a 10 hour white noise.

ha ha ha

Best song ever.

Oh yeah, yeah.

So.

We're going to talk about sustainable websites today so that we can all

learn how to lower our digital carbon footprint and be a bit kinder to the

planet.

I guess the best place to

start though would be by asking what is a sustainable website?

Great question.

Um, I guess, like any other

sustainable thing, it does the job that we want it to do, at the same time actively

trying to minimise any harmful effects on the planet and on the people who are using

it and the people who are not using it.

Um, you know, everyone in the world shouldn't be negatively

affected by your product, ideally.

Um, so that's it, yeah.

That's interesting though because I can

imagine that there are people listening thinking like Is that even a thing?

could my website be, you know, creating a horrendous carbon footprint.

I imagine there's a lot of people that are listening that have just

this is a totally alien thing.

We all heard about sustainability and, you know, looking after the

environment, but not necessarily in the context of our websites, which is

the main reason why I really wanted to have this conversation with you

and to share that with the listeners.

One of

the things that you talk a lot about

is digital footprint.

What do you mean?

When you say digital footprint, what, what exactly is that?

Yeah, so I do feel a bit

like a harbinger of doom sometimes when people ask what I

do.

And I say and then they say, Oh, I didn't realise, you know,

digital stuff had a footprint.

And be like, I'm so sorry, here's something else to feel guilty about.

You know, you've been refilling your shampoo and then I shot down the

road and thought everything was fine.

Um, but yeah, I mean, carbon footprint in general is, is

a bit of a problematic term.

Because it was actually originally sort of coined by the big oil

companies to kind of shift the onus onto the individual to do something

rather than let, you know, people remembering about the massive systemic

change that kind of needs to happen.

Um, but just as a kind of shorthand for how can we minimize any negative impact

on the planet, um, is how I end up using it because that's sort of How we've ended

up using it in sort of common speech.

Um, but yeah, sorry, your website isn't invisible because

it's on a computer and digital.

It's, uh, stored in massive stacks of computers in huge warehouses that

take a lot of electricity to run them and a lot of energy and water,

weirdly, to, um, cool them all down.

You know how your computer gets hot, um, when you've been using it.

Especially.

older computers.

Um, but yeah, those data centers use all of that and they're full of all the

rubbish that we've put on the internet.

So every photo you've ever taken of mediocre dinners, um, every email

you've got in your inbox, um, all those.

Canva files that are just there that you've forgotten that you're not using

just everything that's in the cloud is in a hot building Yeah, so that's how

your website does have an impact because the energy that is used to store it and

to Deliver it to people's devices It takes energy and the way we create a

lot of our energy is not from renewable sources currently

Wow.

This is quite shocking and I'm already starting to feel guilty.

I

have to listen to that Molly.

I'm

thinking about the various accounts that I have online where there are.

Files and graphics

and photos

the forgotten drop box I've got one of

yeah, the forgotten dropbox and oh,

my email as well.

That, I mean, I guess this extends as far as that as well.

That presumably things like email, like if we send an email that, that

we have to have a computer at one end and then it goes via various other

computers and data centers to get to the computer at the other end.

So presumably even that act of writing and sending an email

or signing up to some bunzies.

Newsletter

that that in

itself like if we've got

lots of in emails coming in and out of our

inboxes That presumably as well

that there's a

digital carbon footprint associated with

that

Yeah Yeah, the emails aren't nowhere.

They are just, you know, files being stored and shunted around.

Yeah, so every time you just email back thanks to a big long thread, it's sending

all of that information from the previous 48 messages and just the word thanks.

And if someone's got, you know, a big email signature with a big picture

on it's shifting that over as well.

Um, but, you know, we love email.

You've simply got to be on email nowadays.

Um, uh, it's a great way to send messages.

But I guess, like everything else, just mindful of how you use it.

Like, don't send that email that only has one word in if you don't really need to.

Go through and delete old ones.

Don't send loads of files back and forth if you don't absolutely have to.

That's a nice little quick win.

That you can do, um, in your emails is like, just search for something where you

know you've got loads of rubbish there.

Like in your personal emails, just search for Sainsbury's.

And there's probably about 20 emails confirming your delivery for

food that you ate three years ago.

But you can just delete those.

So, or, you know, if you've got newsletters that you've never read

or something, you know, where you can search for a particular term and

it'll just bring you up a page of emails you're never going to read

again and just delete the whole lot.

So a little, that's a nice little five minute sustainability win.

And it's tiny, tiny marginal gains.

The actual energy it takes to send one email is really tiny, but if

you're sending X number every day,

and then billions of us are doing it every day, it does add up.

Well this nicely segues onto my next question which was to ask about

How we can lower our digital footprint.

Do you have some more suggestions about how we could lower our

digital footprint?

Yeah, so as far as your website goes, the number one

thing that you can Do to have an impact is about where you choose to host it.

So the big hot data centers we were talking about, um, more and more of

them are being, hopefully, I need to check on the stats on that, but

are being powered by renewables.

You know, it's great to have a massive, ugly cuboid building because you can cover

the roof in solar panels or wind turbines.

I don't know, some of them, they're too heavy to go on the roof probably.

Um, But yeah, so a host that actually is using renewable energy to power

all the, all the computers, and that is then efficiently using that.

So, so the, the water that is, um, in the cooling system can be reused only a

finite number of times, sort of weirdly.

It gets all ionized and weird and you can't send it back out

after it's been through about four times, but up to however many

times it is, you can reuse it.

Certain data centers are just being as efficient as possible

using renewable energy.

Um, and so if you don't make any changes to your website, but you host it with

one of those hosts instead of, and the one that's, you know, not particularly

efficient and run on fossil fuels, you've immediately massively reduced the impact

without having, I mean, sometimes it's a faff to move hosts, but not really.

Um, not the same as redesigning your whole site or something.

So yeah, that's the number one thing you can do.

Um, and then once it's being hosted there, it's just about making

the actual file size of the whole website as small as possible.

So if you think about it from the design stage or you're auditing your site,

first thing to do is what is, bit like deleting emails, what is nobody reading

and doesn't have an impact on our business and is this whole page needed?

Delete.

Cut out all the fluff and waffle and things you don't need and,

or a page about an event that happened five years ago, it can go.

And it's, it's just, the good thing is that a lot of these things to do with

reducing the footprint overlap with, um, just making your website better.

So if you've cut out all the fluff and waffle and just have Those key pages that

people actually need the information from and make the information really clear.

It's way better for your, you know, user experience and conversions and all those

sorts of things which actually affect the sort of bottom line of the business.

Yeah, so that would be that and then yeah, I often talk about it

as like, you know, Marie Kondo.

Magic of the art of tidying up.

So like each bit of your website does it spark joy or does it Help

with what the goal of your website is, whether that's sort of sales,

inquiries, or sign ups to something.

Um, and if something's not pulling its literal weight on the page, get it off.

That stock photograph of two businessmen shaking hands, is that,

you know, is that driving conversions?

Or is it just there because there was a gap and it felt like it should go there?

Take it out.

And yeah, and another one is Having a really good knowledge of your user

journey and setting up your, you know, navigation menu and all your buttons

to guide people through really well, because if they can get to where they

need to be in three clicks instead of six clicks, you've halved the footprint

just because they've been to less pages.

So it's kind of having that sustainability, but also kind of best

practice efficiency in all areas, sort of

goggles on when you're making all

those decisions.

It sounds like There's There's a lot of other benefits that

come from this is like this approach of Celeste is more as purchase in

it Where we're looking at sort of clarity over quantity where our website

is concerned So it means that that

the pages that we have

the images that we have the text that we have All of it has to matter.

It has to get to the

point

and yeah

It's minimalism, what people think when you say minimalism

you mean just like a blank white cube or something But it actually means

it's just the very sort of minimum you need to get to where you need to go

So yeah, yeah sort of nice leanness.

It doesn't mean it has to be boring and plain It can be exciting and colorful

and have loads of you know, interesting stuff on it But none of that stuff

is pointless

Mmm, that's interesting because I can imagine that is a

common misconception about sustainable

websites.

What, what other common

misconceptions or myths do you think there are when, uh,

concerning sustainable websites?

Oh,

the main one.

It's probably the last few years it's got different, but I

think historically

kind of things that are environmentally friendly were often

a bit sort of brown and hand woven.

Just, you know, like some shonky woman's made it in her kitchen

in Glastonbury or whatever.

I don't know.

But you know, I mean, just a bit of a sort of a kind of worthy

whole grainy kind of approach.

Um, Or a look to things.

But, um, yeah, it doesn't, like I say, it just means you've hosted it some

way, um, green, and then you've been really efficient with your design.

And then there's, you know, techy stuff about how you serve

up images and things like that.

But that's it.

The actual content of the website doesn't need to be anything.

Whatever style or branding you have, you can still have that.

You just presenting it more efficiently?

that's good to know.

That's good to know.

Why do you

think that architecture practices in particular

might want to have a sustainable

website?

Yeah,

it's obviously a big, not buzzword because that makes it

sound so shallow, but it's obviously a big thing in the building industry

at the moment that hopefully and presumably most firms are thinking about

sustainability and, you know, how they, you know, designing the buildings, the

actual building process, the materials, how that building is using energy and

conserving energy or producing energy.

It, all the kind of, That's really making a big impact in

our physical built environment.

Those kind of things are being talked about and focused on and specialised

in and kind of driven towards.

Um, so I guess if that's what your practice is talking about and having as

a kind of business value, then it should run through everything that you're doing.

It comes with your business as well.

So as well as the buildings that they're designing and getting

built, then what about your office?

What about how your people run your business and your website?

If you sort of, you know, walking the walk as well as talking the talk, I guess.

And, you know, making tweaks to your website might be a smaller impact than

designing a building that's got really good sort of solar panel integration.

But I think it should

all be part of that same effort.

picture.

I agree.

I think that if that is

If you're a practice that's got a focus on sustainability, which, which more and

more practices have these days that's

one of their values that it should carry through for the rest of the

business that, be an irony there, wouldn't there, if they've got like,

Oh, we're all about sustainability.

But then we've got this really bloated website, and, or business

practices generally that are just very unkind to the planet that that just

doesn't seem right really, does it?

So I think in terms of like helping to improve their sustainability credentials

and that carrying through the rest of the way that they run their business,

that it totally makes sense that they would have a sustainable website as well.

Hopefully, if you're listening to this and you are a practice that has a focus on

sustainability, this would be a great time to take a look at your own website and

to reconsider whether or not that we need to, trim it down, make it a bit leaner,

make it a bit more efficient, maybe change

the hosting platform,

um, for an easy, an easy sustainability

win.

Um, definitely, definitely

worth considering.

with your sort of,

absolutely.

hat on, then it makes sense to

have

the website be sustainable if your practice focuses on sustainability,

but also with your kind of cynical business hat on, presumably the

clients that you're working with value sustainability, and that might be part

of the reason why they've chosen you.

So if you are properly having a, like, sustainability as a priority

through the whole of your business, it just gives you more credibility and.

They'll be more willing to kind of, you know, know, like, and trust you and

choose you to give loads of money to.

So, whichever way is, you know, the right thing to do.

But there is also, it makes

sense from a business point of view as well.

Are there any other benefits or advantages

for small businesses generally

from having a sustainable website?

Yeah, well, as I said, it kind of overlaps.

If you're designing with that in mind, you're naturally designing with

better user experience and Um, in mind, but that also will help with

SEO because, um, search engines like fast websites and the kind of lighter,

leaner websites are generally faster.

And also the sort of even the words that you've got on your website,

because if they're really focused on your target client and giving the

right information, it'll help the.

Customer get to where they need to be, but it also makes things really

clear to search engines what your website is about, and they like that.

Not to personify them or anything, but um, that helps them to categorise and then to,

you know, prioritise you in the rankings.

So, yeah, there's the SEO benefit as Well,

Well, that's, that's very important where

websites are concerned for sure.

How can we find the right balance with the website and I'm thinking that

particularly if it's a website, um, in architecture where often they can be

quite image heavy with photos, maybe videos on the site as well, so to try and

find that right balance

between it being sustainable and attractive still, how

do you think we can do that?

How can we find that balance?

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Yeah, I mean,

um,

because as you said, videos and photos

often are the things that are contributing the most weight to a

page, by which I mean the file size of the page, and therefore the amount of

energy it takes to store and deliver.

Um, so, yeah, it's an interesting one, um, that's why I wanted to come on the

podcast as well because, you know, my website, I've got about three, five photos

on the whole thing, um, so it's really, really efficient and light and sort of,

you know, the design is kind of structured around text, but if you're any kind of,

you know, architecture firm or a designer, I've It's a visual thing, a visual job,

and people are going to buy from you when they connect with the visuals.

So, um, yeah, it is about that balancing act.

And it doesn't, if you're trying to be more sustainable, it doesn't mean that

is always your number one priority and that you're ruthlessly pursuing that

at the expense of everything else.

Because it's a business, so it has to intersect with the business goals.

If you're being really sustainable, most businesses should just close.

That would be the most sustainable thing they could do, but then

no one can pay their mortgage.

So everyone's a bit stuck.

Um, so short of that, it is about balancing the goals.

If you think about, um, you know, a product based business, the very

most sustainable thing they could do might be that people cycle to

their shop and refill the product in their own container and take it home.

But.

That might not be how your business works and you have to deliver the products.

So, you know, we can't do that very most sustainable thing, but we can

use cardboard packaging that's really easily recyclable at the curbside.

So, it's trying to figure out how to serve the business goals in

the most sustainable way possible.

So you need lots of great photos of your work on your architecture website, you do.

But, Do you need, you know, for each project, do you need 50 photos

on there or could you have 10?

Um, and once you've chosen those photos that actually are going to

have the most impact, you can then put them at the correct size and

there's various sort of more technical stuff you can do that mean they're

compressed and served more efficiently.

And, yeah, people really connect with video.

It's the sort of well known marketing thing that videos are

really in all walks of business.

But they're so chunky.

So, again, it's about where can I deploy this video that is

going to have the most impact?

Is it, does every project that we're showcasing on our website need a video?

Or, if they all have a video, do we need to have ten in our portfolio on the

website, or is it the five most impactful?

It's these kind of decisions and then you can You know, there are

ways of sort of serving up the video.

My, one thing I would say is having an autoplaying video on the top of

your homepage, just take that off.

Because they're so massive and anything autoplaying is big and when people

land on a homepage, They're often, that's, that's why you have to try and

make that top bit really grab people.

Because people scroll after, what, a second?

Less than a second?

So most of the time, the video won't even got going by the

time they've already moved on.

But in the meantime, it's, it's taken all that energy to load up.

And it looks very shiny and it looks very architect y, website y.

But, it's probably not worth it.

In terms of the energy it

takes and whether people actually look at it.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, so that's a quick win there, isn't it, by

removing that sort of video banner.

And I think really the thing you mentioned about like the case studies,

the photos and the videos, that.

I guess it's about focusing on, again, the quality over the quantity.

So it'd be better to have, uh, maybe three, three videos that are really,

really good rather than having like 20 or the same with the photos as well.

Like, do we need to have a gazillion and one photos just because the photo

shoot when the building was finished, there was a hundred photos taken.

It doesn't mean you have to include all 100 photos on the website case study.

It could just be that there's just,

you know, four or five photos and that's enough.

And as you say, resizing them, and there's various kind of tools to do

that,

And thinking about how your,

how your customer journey

goes, because if someone's come, you know,

they're browsing around a few firm websites, seeing who

they might want to engage.

When they land on your homepage, that play, auto playing video at the top,

they don't even, they don't even know what you're about, or sometimes if

you're in the right city or anything yet, that that's not the place.

But once someone's.

gone into a few pages on their website, and if maybe, you know, it's when

they've, if they start looking into the case studies in your portfolio, they're

obviously quite interested, and that's where a video where you can feel what

it feels like to walk through one of our buildings might have a real impact

on them, you know, they're, they've sort of expressed an interest already,

and that's when you can start reeling them in with all these extra stuff.

The 0.

5 seconds after they first landed on your homepage and just trying to read what

your firm is called is not the time for that video, there's no point, so it's

um, yeah, I know it's, in small firms, it's sometimes hard to have that detailed

kind of knowledge if there's often a one person marketing department, but to

the best of your ability, deploying the heavier stuff at the most crucial time

just, yeah, makes it worth it.

that makes sense.

I would say as well, Molly, that your website, despite the fact that

there's only four or five photos on the whole site, it's a great site.

It's really effective.

Like straight away, like, even down to things like the, um, the difference

in like the size of fonts, the wording that's used as well, it's

got just enough copy in

there, but it's got, uh, it packs a punch of, uh, with

personality and It's just really

good.

And like you say, you know, it's a very efficient, um, website, but it's very

effective and that's something that, a lot of us could learn from that.

So definitely go

and check out Molly's website, um, to see just a great example

of a sustainable website.

I

in the cushy position of, you

know, I, that because people want a website, and often it's

they want to work with a person.

So kind of foregrounding my personality through words, works for my business.

So it's, it was an easier job to make it.

a smaller carbon footprint because I'm not an architecture firm

that has loads of videos and stunning photos of big buildings.

So it was kind of easier but it's also, um, quite a good, so part of the reason

why I don't have loads of photos is I haven't, like, splashed out for a big

branding photo shoot, partly because my job isn't that visually interesting.

Like it'll, it'll be photos of me smiling, looking at a laptop, um, which,

you know, I haven't quite thought, oh, that's worth putting, you know,

spending two grand on or whatever.

Um, so actually I've got some lovely photos that, um, in fact, a previous guest

on this podcast, Ange Lyons, uh, took of me with a, Uh, a very nice camera in a

travel lodge , and cut the background out.

Bish b Bosch.

I'm ready for our website.

So I kind of, because I didn't have a lot of, um, you know, visual assets,

I went with a kind of text led design and then yeah, people say they really

like it and it, it's effective.

So actually the, the point of saying that is it's a nice lesson and if

people are thinking, oh, if I make it.

sustainable, it's going to be really restrictive and I'm not going to

allow to do any of my creative ideas.

But as, you know, creative people, you'll know that sometimes

actually within constraints, that sometimes is where, like, the most

interesting things are created.

So it doesn't, don't need to feel like it's a constraining element to have.

kind of sustainable lens on things, but maybe just go into it with an open mind

of actually if we're taking this as an opportunity to make our user journey

more efficient, to you know, look again at how lean and impactful the website

can be, but also and some like creative idea might make you stand out from the

crowd might come out of it because they, you know, a lot of them The big, lovely

picture of a building you've designed and then, you know, a lot of them do

look quite similar in an industry.

was just going to say actually that there's an opportunity

to actually do something that does, um, look very different and stand out

because that is the generic architecture practice website is that it's very,

image heavy, lots of photos of like finished buildings and all of that.

But actually some of the content that somebody who somebody that's

actively looking for a practice that's, you know, getting ready to

make a purchasing decision, a lot of that content isn't necessarily

what they're looking for anyway.

Like they want to know about, you know, working with the practice,

what the process is like, The nitty gritty of how much do you charge

and why do you charge that much?

And what's included and what's the right level of service for me?

And, and that doesn't require having a big image and video heavy website to do that.

A

lot of that can actually

just be done with words, the right words.

Yeah, that's a

good, good point about, again, your poor one

person marketing department needs to be aware of this, but

if you talk to your current and previous clients, why did they choose you?

And that might give you a good, you know, I mean, that's sort of I'm not trying

to tell the marketers how to suck eggs, but that can give you a good indication

of what should we be foregrounding.

If people, you've got such smooth processes, and they had amazing

communication the whole way through, and they felt like they were in

safe hands, and even when there were delays, they were informed

and everything felt not stressful.

That's a, a huge thing that needs to be right in people's faces when

they go on their website because I'm sure that's not always the case.

Um, and obviously, you need the pictures there because people want to

know, do their buildings look awful?

Or have they done anything nice that I might have seen?

That kind of thing.

But, yeah, the, the reason that people choose you, the

visual might not come first.

And communicating what you do really, really well.

Is, yeah, might have a bit,

be a bit more

impactful to have front and center on your website.

Having implemented some of the tips that you've shared Molly, so if

the listeners are like great, I'm going to change hosting platforms, we're going

to strip out some of the rubbish off our website to make it leaner, but, uh, just

as if not more effective than it was before, do you have any tips on how to

tell people about

this how to communicate what you've done as a business in

terms of, uh, sustainability and the improvements to your website?

Yeah, this is an interesting one because

it's a bit invisible.

As I've said, like the awareness that

digital things even have a carbon footprint is quite low in general.

And, um, so in terms of how much kind of kudos you get for doing these things

from your potential customers and customers, it's not necessarily huge.

Um, and yeah, it's also, like I said, you could have the exact same website

and have it hosted somewhere else and you've slashed that footprint,

but nothing looks different.

It's not as obvious as if, you know, a sort of product based company changes

all their packaging to brown cardboard.

It's really big, you know, with a green leaf on it.

It's just a huge sort of visual signifier of, oh, this brand is more sustainable.

Whether they are or not might be another question.

Um, so.

That is kind of a tricky thing about, um, how you communicate it.

Um, something I didn't mention, which is actually a good place for people to

start, is to actually calculate what is the footprint of your website now.

Um, so there's, um, the main calculators I use is WebsiteCarbon.

com and, um, something called DigitalBeacon.

Um, and Yeah, it's an estimate, because there's so much involved in measuring

the impact of one action or one product.

But it's a kind of rough idea, and then that's your benchmark, so if you make the

improvements, you can measure it again.

And, you know, they're both rough estimates, but if it's a much lower rough

estimate, you've done something well.

Um, so Website Carbon, they do have a little badge you can put.

You know, if you want to put that in your footer about how many grams of carbon that

website uses, um, and then, yeah, it is a tricky, I guess, whatever your normal

comms channels are that you're telling people, um, is to just talk to people

and maybe be kind of quite transparent about the process, because a lot of people

don't know about it, so that would be quite a helpful thing to put out into

the world of saying, oh, we realized this was something that wasn't so great in

terms of sustainability in our business.

Here's where we started, we did these things, got these people

to help us, maybe it was me.

Um, and, uh, you know, here's the finished result and be like, yeah,

our website still looks amazing.

We're really happy with it.

But we know that every time someone clicks on a page, it's,

um, you know, doing less harm.

So if you've got a company blog or newsletter, sort of showcase it there.

Anywhere else on your website that you're talking about your sustainable

practices in terms of building, um, then, you know, talk about it there as well.

But, um, yeah, it's not necessarily something that people will notice very

much, unless you really do, really do put it, talk, talk at them about it.

Yeah, I think though that that in itself makes it actually quite an

interesting thing to talk about because the fact that it's something that a lot

of people might not be aware even exists, that it's even a thing actually gives

you a really interesting talking point that if you do, you know, if you have a

presence, like most of us do with business owners on social media, or if they have

an email newsletter or any channels that they have to talk about what they

do to then bring that up and say, Hey, like, Did you, did you realize that like

websites have this digital footprint?

Like, did you even know this?

And, we didn't.

And then we, we've discovered this and this is what we've done as a business,

to do our little bit, because this is what we believe this is what we're

all about as a sustainable business.

So I think that could be really,

you know, really kind of, uh, interesting,

quite potentially quite powerful, uh, posts that people could

put out there.

Hmm.

And going back to what we're saying about differentiating

yourself in a bit of a homogenous landscape that, You know, there's

a lot of architecture practices, you know, doing the same thing,

presenting it in the same way.

There might be a lot of them that are saying we're sustainable, but if no one

else, not many other people are talking about it, then that's another point of

difference that you can be, look, we're so good at this, we even have a sustainable

website, and here's what that means.

Yeah, it's just something else you can use to, should be that, I mean, hopefully

my sort of niche won't exist soon, and that'll just be like how we make websites.

A sustainable architecture shouldn't be a niche, it should

be just how we make buildings.

And, um, so hopefully it won't be a point of difference.

But right now, get on, get on board before everyone's doing it.

And then it's another way you can

stand

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Get ahead of the curve.

Molly, what would be the main thing that you'd like

everyone to

take away from this conversation today?

I think probably just the awareness that our digital

world isn't invisible in a fluffy cloud, and is a physical thing

that is using a lot of energy.

Um, and then to, like, tell someone else about it.

Because just spreading that awareness is probably the number

one step we all need to do.

Um, yeah, before

you get to any of that, the website stuff.

Cool.

And was there anything

else that you wanted to add

about the topic that we haven't already covered in the conversation today?

No, I don't think so.

I think we've done a pretty good job.

We're doing alright.

I think we've covered

quite a bit there.

Well,

um, Molly, I'd like to kind of wrap things up with a non topic question.

Um, I, I love to travel and to discover new places.

Admittedly, I don't actually travel that much or that far compared

to my backpacking days many years

ago.

But It leads me to ask, what, what is one of

your

favourite places and what do you love about it?

This could be anywhere, it could be near or far.

well, it's a UK based one, so if you're not going

far, you might want to travel.

Um, this is me and my son's new favourite

place as of last year.

It's called Tewan in Wales.

Um, there's a steam railway there that, um The guy who wrote the Thomas

the Tank Engine books used to be a, a member and volunteer at and based some

of the trains on, so we went to visit it, and now we've become volunteers, and

we've been back again, and we're going back again, and, um, yeah, it's just a

little town, so there's a beach, lovely steam railway, there's a cinema that

has table service, and, um, yeah, just a nice little town, and a lovely steam

railway with all friendly, keen people, so, Volunteering and keeping it running.

So, yeah, obviously steam trains are powered by coal,

but that's my line in the sand.

Let's de fossil fuel everything, except any remaining coal we've dug up.

The heritage railways are allowed to use it.

It's my stance.

So I can't believe I just recommended something that runs

on coal as the end to this.

But it's a nice

town.

It's a nice town in Wales.

Well, you know, we'll, we'll let that one

slide, we'll let that one slide.

As you say, there's, there's already plenty of coal that's been dug up,

Yeah, that's for the trains,

yeah, that's

not for the websites.

That's right, yeah.

So Molly, I've really enjoyed the chat today.

Thanks so much for coming

on the show and sharing your expertise.

Could you just remind

everybody again about your newsletter and how they can sign up for that?

It's super short and people find it useful and funny

and sometimes there's a quiz.

Uh, on average it

takes about 101 seconds to read and that's actually out loud.

So, um, in your head it's even quicker.

So it won't hang around in your inbox getting, um, taking up

energy and never getting read.

And to sign up it's mollygetsitdone.

com slash sign up.

Brilliant.

And

if people would like to connect with you online, where would be

the best place for them to do that?

LinkedIn.

LinkedIn.

It's the only social media I use because I'm cool.

Laughter.

Oh well, I shall, I'm not going to argue with that point,

and I shall make sure that we include

a link to

your LinkedIn profile in the show notes as well as the link

to sign up for that newsletter.

So thanks again Molly, much appreciated.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Next time I chat with Mel Barfield about how

to be luckier in your career.

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