Analysis of a Sample of Websites in Terms of Sustainability, Performance, and Efficiency

The share of internet usage increases every year. Websites are becoming larger and more complex. These changes lead to rising energy consumption and higher greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is crucial to determine the current state of websites in an industry to identify the factors that most influence this development.

This study looks at the current state of websites in the restaurant industry. This is the research question: What is the sustainability, performance, and efficiency of websites in the restaurant industry, and how are these influenced by metadata (price level, type, reviews)?

To answer the research question, a sample of restaurant websites from the Stuttgart area was analyzed. Data from 8743 restaurants were collected using the Google Maps Places API (New). These websites were then analyzed using Google Lighthouse on various metrics such as page weight, number of requests, distribution of resource types, use of media like images and videos, and scripts. Additionally, metadata such as price level, type of restaurant, and rating were analyzed to determine if these factors influence the website analysis.

The results show that restaurant websites have potential for improvement in terms of sustainability, performance, and efficiency. The median page weight is too high at 1.8 MB. Images have the largest share of page weight at 61.1%. Older formats such as JPEG, PNG, and SVG are used significantly more often than modern formats such as WEBP and AVIF. Restaurants with a high price level have larger websites in the sample and use modern formats more frequently.

The study provides recommendations on what stakeholders of a website project can do to make their content sustainable, performant, and efficient.