When people visit your business’s website, they should be able to find out how you’re making a social and environmental impact. Creating a sustainability webpage can significantly improve your brand reputation, establish accountability, and create a positive impact in your community and beyond.
This page, whether you call it ‘Sustainability’, ‘Impact’, or something else entirely, should contain all the information about the good your company and team are doing for the environment and the community. It should also set out your objectives and strategies for reaching them in the future.
Despite being more popular for non-profits, any company can benefit from creating their own sustainability webpage.
Why Should My Business Have a Webpage on Sustainability?
Simply put, consumers care about whether your product and company have a positive impact.
For many, it can be the deciding factor. In turn, companies who share the same values as their customers and are making an effort to change things see gains in revenue, loyalty, and perception.
It’s also an opportunity to differentiate your business from your competitors. Individuals will always be excited about a great product or service, but it’s the ‘and’ that convinces them to commit. With a sustainability webpage dedicated to real stories of change, you make your company stand out.
List the efforts you took to make your product or service ethical and sustainable. Talk about your commitment to minimising packaging, using ethically-sourced materials, and reducing your carbon footprint.
Not every company is willing to commit the time and energy to do this. Having it all laid out clearly on one page puts your company in the best position to attract conscious consumers.
Aside from your customers, a sustainability webpage promotes company culture as much as community impact.
Feeling like a company is a part of a bigger movement can increase job satisfaction. On top of that, values like a commitment to sustainability, diversity, and equal pay will attract a broader range of applicants allowing you to cultivate the best possible team.
Be The Climate Solution
Creating Your Sustainability Page
Two of the most important things to keep in mind when creating a sustainability webpage for your company are relevance and specificity.
Businesses need to do more than just say they care about the environment; they must prove it. To make sure your company appears credible, authentic, and trustworthy, avoid generic language or broad claims.
To say that you are committed to people, giving back, or protecting the environment is not enough; you have to back it up with proof, facts, and most importantly, action. Be specific about your milestone and goals, as well as the steps you and your team are taking to achieve them.
Stats, data, stories, quotes, pictures, and videos all prove that your impact is more than words on a webpage.
Another vital thing to consider is the tone.
To have a truly successful and productive impact page, you must communicate the ‘why’. Why do you care? Why are you spending time, energy, and resources on this cause?
This is an excellent opportunity to humanise your business and be more transparent. Avoid jargon. Instead, offer heart, dedication, and passion, and that will be reflected in your audience too.
It’s important to remember that, while it’s important to be specific, you don’t need to put every single detail on this page.
In fact, it’s more authentic if you lay out your core sustainability plan on this page but have extra information ‘sprinkled throughout’ your content and recent news.
How Play it Green Can Help
Even with some advice, constructing a sustainability webpage can be difficult and time-consuming, especially if you’re a small business.
That’s why Play it Green provides all our members with a pre-made page for their website that details the social and environmental impact you are making. It can also be customised to point out how your company, in particular, is lowering its carbon footprint.
Not only does this create a place where your customers, employees, and stakeholders can keep updated on your environmental impact, it helps build trust through transparency.
It can also help you avoid accusations of greenwashing. This can be common if companies include information about their environmental and social efforts in their marketing but don’t discuss it elsewhere.
If you are a business trying to better our world, you should be proud to show off your actions. And with all the benefits of doing so, there’s no good reason not to.
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