Single-Page Website Design: Right or Wrong Direction?

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Single-page websites gradually fill the internet space. It is the recently emerged trend that becomes more and more prominent these days. Originally designed for online portfolios, the usage of one-page designs rose sharply from commercial and social advertising to narrowly focused businesses and services. So what is the secret of such a rapidly growing popularity?

This new format in website building allows website owners to test their audiences, in attempt to find out their preferences and improve user experience. Having a website, you should realize that it is made not just for you. Your point of view is certainly important, you are the boss. But if your website is not user-oriented, you should probably forget about doing business. Have you heard the motto “the client is always right”? It is still on the front burner.

User Experience

The workspeed of a website is another of the key factors, affecting user experience. Nobody waits too long. That’s too bad to lose a website visitor only because of a couple of seconds. But in terms of the web, these few moments cost trust to a website. That’s where single-page designs have the advantage in comparison with multi-page variants.

Single web pages load fast and have much simpler structure rather than their conventional counterparts. Simplicity means a lot in the case of one-page websites. Thinking over a single-page design, you should take into account limited website space and content arrangement.

On the other hand, it goes without saying that one-page websites are not good choices for big corporations. As usual, such companies require multi-page websites to accommodate the large amount of data.

Yes, the loading time is longer and the multi-page website maintenance takes more efforts, but this doesn’t mean that you should take risks and sacrifice your ready-made and successful website only because of promoting new trend. Think more than twice before making a decision of website rebuilding. It is a pretty hard task.

If you are already bothered with the fact that a single-page website will not meet your requirements. Or vice versa, if you prepared yourself to get one web page for your business, please, don’t be hasty with your conclusions, because there are a few more criteria that may possibly change your mind.

Usability

The first one is a high level of single-page website usability. It is the best option for a website owner to place everything needed in one single place. Website visitors will undoubtedly like watching videos, listening to audios, checking out photos, located on a one-page website, rather than do the same actions on its multi-page alternative. A user doesn’t have to flounder around tons of pages in a search of the necessary content.

Clicking on the one-page website menu sections, a website will automatically slide you down to the desired area. This is another positive feature related to single web pages. The clicks number is reduced to a minimum.

So it is time for scrolling! There are a lot of single-page designs that have awesome appearance thanks to the parallax effect in part. The parallax scrolling is not just the way of website browsing. In combination with picturesque design, appropriate photo, audio and video accompaniment parallax is the all-time means for visitors engaging as well as for drawing their attention to one or another topic.

Becoming a part of storytelling, this amazing effect turns an average visit to a website to an atmospheric and exciting adventure. No matter, what the aim of a single-page website with parallax is, it is totally worth to scroll it down till the end.

But be careful, because it is not recommended to build one-page website only for parallax that looks so cool. You can unnecessarily overload your business online representative. The parallax effect will influence the one-page site functioning much. So there is a dilemma, whether parallax is really necessary for making one-page website fancy or this effect can be neglected, in order to relieve the mobile version.

Another good reason in favor of choosing single-page websites – mobile friendliness. I think, everyone, who is related to web design or website building, recognizes all the magnitude of responsive design.

This tendency took mobile devices on the same level with desktop computers or even more, changed priorities for web designers and web developers who begin thinking in different direction. Technologies change so quickly. Who knows, maybe, in a few years we will witness the end of the desktop era?

There is no secret that surfing the web with smartphone and tablet is more handy and practical than in the old times of PC domination. Responsiveness is the key to multiply the amount of single-page website potential visitors. Users will definitely enjoy and appreciate the perfectly adapted mobile and tablet versions of your website.

Of course, a multi-page website may be responsive too. So what’s the difference? It is all about efforts again. The simpler a design is the easier it will be adjusted to mobile screen resolutions. One can bet that single-page design has much a speedy head start against multi-pages, talking about their functionality on mobiles.

What’s Your Choice?

Users will always value comfortable navigation and design simplicity. This may be achieved, building both multi- and one-page websites. Is it really worth to make a redesign from multi-page website into its single-page analog or even more: to build one-page website from scratch? It is a personal matter, including your needs and tastes. You already discovered most of benefits and gaps. So now it all depends on your decision!

Need some inspiration in making of a right choice? While you come up with your decision, check out some single-page website design examples. This inspirational part could change your opinion about this new and totally cool brand in web design.