Being ‘ethical’ is a challenge for anyone in today’s world. It’s more difficult than ever to understand the implications of your actions and choices, especially in the digital space. You need to do extensive research just to understand who owns the platforms you use, how they use your data, what happens to your customers’ data and who else they support.
That’s why we’re over the moon to have been named Best UK-Wide Ethical Web Design Agency 2022 in the Northern Enterprise Awards.
Although we recognise the difficulties, we’ve made serious effort to conduct ourselves in an ethical manner since we started. It hasn’t always been the smoothest process either. It sometimes means telling people things they don’t want to hear, making additional work for ourselves, or sometimes even turning down business altogether.
In some ways, it puts us at a disadvantage. However, we believe very strongly that it puts us one step closer to doing business with the kind of people we want to do business with.
Just some of the steps we’ve taken to be more ethical include:
- Maintaining a remote-working model for our staff and partners, reducing travel to reduce overall carbon emissions and provide a better work/life balance.
- Providing a range of hosting options, including hosting options powered by 100% renewable energy (and a commitment to source more).
- A conservative approach to GDPR, preventing clients from accidentally skirting the regulations and in turn protecting their users.
- We actively provide privacy-positive alternatives for key services, including self-hosted webfonts to avoid IP address leaking, and cookie-free analytics platform alternatives.
- We have actively stopped (or in some cases never started) using online tools or services that have been proven to undermine the integrity of truth, negatively impact the mental health of users, ignore user privacy, cause addiction, cause harm or subvert democratic processes. Our Combined Digital and IT policy informs staff of our rules and the risks of using these services in a wider context.
- We provide fully secure and confidential communication methods for clients who wish to adopt these, and support clients in implementing technologies that respect user privacy for no additional charge. (Privacy is protected by Article 12 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights)
If you’re interested in what makes us different, check out our ethical statement – a document published since day 1 of our business where we outline how we work.
If you’re looking for an Ethical web designer, then look no further. Contact us today for a chat.
