Canada – Launching a new range of electric SUVs, Volkswagen has created a low-impact website to reflect its commitment to reducing its carbon footprint.
The Carbon-Neutral Net website has a lower digital carbon footprint, achieved by manipulating American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) text into the shape of its new SUVs, instead of adding real photos of the vehicles. By using the monochrome ASCII text, the site's load time is shorter and uses less energy, making it a green alternative to traditional retail or brand platforms.
The landing page also includes the online footprint calculator Website Carbon, proving it produces 99% less carbon dioxide per page view than average websites. In turn, the site echoes the green credentials of Volkswagen's new electric SUV. ‘We created this web experience to educate Canadians about sustainability in the digital world,’ says Volkswagen. ‘By reducing our electric vehicle web pages to little more than black and white text we’ve significantly lowered the amount of data embedded in them.’
An increasing number of brands are extending carbon reduction efforts to customers' online experience by recoding platforms to use less energy. Discover more in Low-Impact Interfaces.