6 strategies to align your user experience with your sustainability values🫶🏼

Importance of Aligning UX with Sustainability

73% of global consumers are willing to adjust their habits for environmental benefits and increasingly consumers are shifting to more sustainable alternatives when purchasing products. I’m not just sharing this because it’s an interesting statistic. I’m sharing this because it can become your competitive advantage.

If you want to remain relevant, integrating sustainability into your user experience is not just an option. It’s a necessity.

Today I’ll be sharing some actionable strategies you can take to do this. We cover in this newsletter:

• Strategies for integrating sustainability into your user experience

• Measuring the Impact: KPIs and Tools

• Case Study: Cult Beauty

• 10 Actionable Steps for B-corps and Sustainable Startups

Strategies for Integrating Sustainability into UX

1. Carbon Footprint Transparency

Example: You can provide a 'carbon footprint calculator' that displays the environmental impact of shipping choices. Make sure that the information you provide here is tangible. Customers want to understand the ‘so what’. If you’re telling them their purchase reduces X amount of carbon, what does this actually mean? It’s tricky for us to visualise the real benefits of that reduction. Take it one step further and help connect the dots in terms of the impact to people, planet and/or animals.

Action: Integrate a real-time carbon footprint calculator at the checkout process to make the user aware of their impact and enable greener choices

2. Eco-Friendly Onboarding

Example: If you’re a food delivery service, you can offer to donate a % of your profits to an eco-friendly initiative for every new customer who opts to receive their meal without plastic cutlery. Of course you need to make sure the service you’re delivering is quality, but small touches like this can be the difference between whether a customer tells their friend about the new food delivery service they swear by, or whether it’s just another brand they use out of convenience, not out of love.

Action: During the onboarding process, incentivise users to choose eco-friendly options like paperless billing / non-plastic alternatives or whatever makes sense for your product.

3. Resource-Efficient Design

Example: You can use an energy-efficient dark mode design for your website. Dark mode is way less intensive. To put this into perspective if 1 million iPhone users on dark mode for a year would save about 144,000kg of CO2, which is the same emissions as 31 cars (link to source). While it doesn’t sound like a lot it still makes a difference. Dark mode is also easier on the eyes and saves battery life.

Action: Opt for design elements that reduce screen brightness and energy consumption

4. Sustainable Material or Ingredient Use

Example: If your product uses more sustainable materials or ingredients, it’s essential you communicate this on your product pages so customers are aware. For more consciously-minded customers, these are unique selling points that can tip them over the edge towards purchasing your product over a less sustainable alternative.

Action: Use eye-catching product description sections to highlight the sustainability of materials used in your products e.g. how those materials are made, where they come from and how that reduces impact on our world’s resources.

5. Eco Rewards

Example: Reward customers through loyalty points for choosing more sustainable alternatives when they shop with you. You can encourage shifts to more sustainable behaviours by doing so and at the same you’re doing good for the planet. Look at existing loyalty programmes, like Retykle’s for ideas and inspiration on how to effectively market yours.

Action: Create an eco-rewards program that encourages users to make sustainable choices.

6. Accessible Information

Example: Make it easy for customers to easily navigate to sustainability information about your product’s supply chain and lifecycle, or further sustainability efforts to show customers you care about being transparent. Even if you’re not 100% where you want to be, sharing your journey and the steps you’re taking to get there all go along way towards building brand loyalty.

Action: Make information about your company's sustainability practices easily accessible within the user interface.

Measuring the Impact: KPIs and Tools

Primary KPI: User Engagement Rate with Sustainability Features

Monitor how many users are interacting with the sustainability features you've integrated into the UX. Pro tip - implement one of the strategies above at a time so you can focus on what’s working or what’s not, and tweak it before moving on. It will also help with measuring whether your initiative has been effective. Making too many changes at once reduces your certainty of causation.

Secondary KPIs:

• Sustainability Feature Adoption Rate: Measure how many users are actually opting for the green choices you provide.

• Customer Retention Rate Among Users Engaged with Sustainability Features: Track how many users continue to use your platform because of its sustainability features.

Specific tools you can use:

• Google Analytics for tracking user engagement metrics.

• Content Square allows you to see where customers are clicking or viewing on specific pages

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Case Study Example

Cult Beauty

Cultbeauty integrated a tool called Provenance to help customers validate sustainability claims and saw a 35% higher purchase rate and 5% increase in post-purchase sentiment.

10 Actionable Steps for B-corps and Sustainable Startups

1. Conduct a Sustainability Audit: Before you can improve, you need to know where you stand.

2. Interview Your Customers: Understand what your customers value in terms of sustainability.

3. Consult Industry-Specific Experts: Partner with experts to guide your sustainable UX design strategy.

4. A/B Test Features: Test your sustainability features to find out what works best for your audience.

5. Utilise AI for Customisation: Use machine learning to offer personalized green choices.

6. Gamify Sustainability: Incorporate elements of game design to make sustainability fun and engaging.

7. Implement User Feedback Loops: Continuously update features based on user feedback.

8. Showcase Eco-Certification Badges: Certify your sustainable practices and display on your website

9. Regularly Update Stakeholders: Keep everyone, from your team to your users, in the loop about your sustainability efforts.

By strategically integrating sustainability into your UX design, you'll not only be adhering to your core values but also enhancing your market competitiveness. Align your UX with your green business goals.

P.S. Got any questions or comments? Reply to this newsletter—I'd love to hear your thoughts!

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