Here is a good article about how websites are green:

Greening Your Website Can Help Green Your Business
Source: Coopweb, April 6, 2010

On April 22nd, our planet celebrates its 40th Earth Day. I am a strong proponent that it’s the little changes that can help make big change in our businesses and ultimately our lives.

Listed below are some small changes to make that can help save our environment and it is all via our websites – so it is super easy to implement.:

* Use Your Website As Your Company’s Brochure – save a tree and your wallet. Your customers will become accustomed to viewing your site online and getting the most up-to-date information as it can be updated on the fly.

* Offer Your Catalog Online Only – imagine if Amazon printed out their online catalog. My gosh! It would never be current and it would weigh more than my dog, Cousteau (150 lbs). This would enable you to have an even larger offering of products, while keeping your inventory up-to-date.

* Use Online Marketing – as a primary source to get your message out. The advantages of this are saved money, saved environment and you can view the open rates and statistics to see true effectiveness of your campaigns.

* Use Social Media – Twitter and Facebook can offer you some quick information updates to your customers that nothing else can beat in terms of ROI. 140 characters can turn your new product viral. Take advantage of this and save some hard earned money.

* Blog – Internet Karma – that’s what blogging truly is. Give. Give your knowledge, give your information, give your expertise and watch your returns. Your information will be more valuable than any brochure spouting your amazing talents. It’s a wonderful, green and generous way to get the word out about your business.

* EFax – we use this service, but there are others out there. Use your email box to get faxes. It is a super paper saver and uses less energy having one less business appliance.

* Utilize YouTube – it’s free, it’s fab and even sometimes viral. Get a free YouTube account and post your business videos, link to your website, send out links via Twitter and Facebook – and you will get the word out.

* Produce Quotes, Invoices, and Checklists Right On Your Website – On our tools tab on our website, we offer online quotes, invoices and checklists for you to use. One of the ways we would waste the most amount of paper is by producing a quote. Our quotes usually ranged from 7 to 35 pages. Eek! And, of course a meeting would mean creating duplicates. It saves money and time for everyone.

* Use Skype – need to conduct a meeting? Why not do it over Skype? Everyone can meet from their own office, thus reducing transportation costs. Especially awesome for long-distance meetings.

* Offer Newsletters and Annual Reports Online Only – this one is a pet peeve of mine. We donate to a lot of organizations every month. (See our list of charities) So many non-profits send us their Annual Report and Newsletter via snail mail! My gosh! Do I really want our donation to go to paying for all that printing and postage? Not really. I would prefer that what we donated would go to the people that we are trying to help out. That is one of the reasons I chose CASA as our Charity of the Month for April. They sent me a postcard last month asking me to view their newsletter online. They are saving the money from printing, thus making sure that the children that they support get the benefits of the donations we make.

There are so many small ways we can make a big difference on our environment – our beautiful planet. Please make a commitment to green your business in one way this year. You will feel good about it and maybe even save a little green while you’re at it.

Please share your website green ideas below in our comments.

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