Recently, two Noergia clients asked us to analyze their One Page Websites. Both had been professionally developed and more than fulfilled their purpose. However, in one of them our analysis gave as a result that the one page web option was right and in the other one that it was better to evolve to a multipage web. Why? Now we tell you…

What is a One Page Web?

It is a website where you can access any content by scrolling down. When you click on a menu tab it takes you to a point on the same page you are on. The home page, services, contact, all on the same page, there are no others.

What are the advantages of a Single Page Web?

Having all the content on one page makes reading easier, forces to summarize and is more intuitive for the user. It adapts better to different terminals and, according to enthusiasts (see for example 8 reasons why pageless design is the future) reduces the bounce rate (quite debatable, since technically the bounce rate is, by definition, 100% on a single-page website) and increases conversion compared to multipage versions.

On a one-page website it is easier to tell a story, which is now so fashionable. If there is a need to go deeper, you can use dropdowns, bubbles, flips and other dynamic media to introduce more content.

On top of that, development times are shorter, for example because you work with only one template.

The panacea?

A practical analysis

Let’s go to our analysis. In the first case, BPlay offers a B2B service to companies that want to reward their consumers with digital content, providing them with both the content and the content management platform.

B!Play’s target customer is the large B2C company. The website must inform and convince potential customers who already know the product and the spontaneous attraction of interested parties is going to be done in a reduced niche and with keywords that are not very contested. The website does not need to explain the product in depth, because this is already done with personalized visits. The visual impact is extremely important in this case, while other considerations such as SEO (which we discuss in detail on this page), the depth of the content or analytics are secondary.

Therefore, in our opinion, under these conditions a one-page website is an excellent solution.

The second case is another very interesting innovation project, the Nubart audio guides. Nubart offers audio guides that visitors to a museum can access by reading the bidi code on a card provided by the museum with their cell phone. Therefore, the museum does not have to manage audio guide devices. As it is not an app, the user does not have to download anything to his cell phone.

Nubart’s target customer is varied and numerous: all the museums and exhibitions in the world. Your website must explain well the novel principle of a product and there are many questions to be answered. Your website is pleasant to read and has all the relevant information, however we believe that it should evolve towards a multipage. The reasons have to do with the limits and disadvantages of one-page websites.

Disadvantages of one-page websites

Websites and single-page webapps load the page only once and have a single url. In the case of websapps, the contents are loaded as they are required (Twitter is an example of a monopage webapp: new content appears, but the page is not reloaded).

Two problems arise from this:

1. Analytics on a one-page website

If your website has only one url, the basic analytics of Google Analytics will give you very little information: number of users and average time on the page, little else.

You will not know what content your readers read or where they get bored and leave the web, which is essential to improve the conversion of your site.

There are specialized frameworks for webapps that provide the necessary tools for good analytics, such as Angular.

But for the most common case, a WordPress website, it requires the installation of Google Tag Manager, a data layer and generate virtual pages and events that record user scrolling and interactions with links and images.

Installing it doesn’t require NASA, but neither does it require the knowledge of the average webmaster.

2. SEO on a one-page website

A one-page website is not meant to have a lot of content. As a general rule, little content means little search engine success. Even if you supplement it with text in dropdowns, flips and bubbles, it will always be less accessible to search spiders than plain text. Big point against.

With a single url, search engine optimization becomes more complicated. You cannot follow the scheme of optimizing a page for each keyword. Positioning for fewer keywords ends up meaning less traffic to the website.

The one-page websites we have encountered so far have had mediocre loading times, so they also do not benefit from the value that Google places on high loading speeds when it comes to ranking.

There are certainly a number of best practices that help alleviate the problem. For example, it is advisable to separate text blocks with <div> and head each one with a <h1>. Within the blocks you should use keyword identifiers, e.g.: better than

<div id=”alq-auto”> <h2>Motorhome rental</h2>

would be:

<div id=”alquiler-autocaravana”>

Motorhome rental

But, in short, if you want to stand out in search engines it doesn’t seem like the best option.

3. Growth problems

Finally, another factor to take into account is the growth of the website: Will you need to add content, new products, new functionalities, more detailed explanations?

You can’t infinitely load your single page. Although there are now the aforementioned dynamic elements that allow you to add content without overloading the user experience, there is a limit to everything.

For all these reasons, a website that must carry the commercial weight of a little-known product and that will face numerous changes in the future does not seem advisable to keep the corset of the one-page format.

On the other hand, a website that must first and foremost look good and offer a good multimedia experience can perfectly well be a one-page site.

The choice is yours, I hope I have given you arguments for you to make the right choice.

If you were interested in this article, our category on web graphic design contains more information that you might find interesting.