Single Page Website – Pros and Cons
A Single Page Website or one-page website is actually a single page generated dynamically that offers either vertical or horizontal navigation which takes you to different parts of the web page instead of an altogether different page in traditional websites. You actually just scroll through a single page to get to the desired section or use a link to get there.
Single On-page website:
No page refresh -This is a rather obvious thing but is it clear enough to the designers? Such websites are fast becoming a norm on mobile since users can get to exactly what they want rather quickly. It tremendously improves the responsiveness, making back-end maintenance easier.
Better page rank on Google – These sites are just perfect for SEO. Since these sites are single pages, all inbound links would point towards that page, which is normally split over multiple web pages in traditional websites. This has a positive impact on your Google page rank. Due to their high content density, these types of websites attract a lot of search engine spiders.
Quality Over Quantity – When you remove the burden of optimizing and designing several pages, the developer can focus on making one single page albeit of good quality. After all, coming up with a good design is a time-consuming job. The fewer pages better the user experience you can deliver.
Mobile-friendliness – Multiple statistics reveal that mobile users are more likely to quit from a slow loading site when compared to a desktop user, who is slightly more patient. So it should not be a surprise that single-page websites are the design paradigm of choice in the mobile market. It is also due to the small screen size of the device. The limited screen size demands simplicity in the website design.
Stand Out From the Crowd – Single-page sites are still not very common. You can use that to your advantage and become a part of the single-page crowd. This design is for the time being associated with smart and lean start-ups.
Single Page Website:
The large size of the file – It is also a fact that if your page is heavy i.e. it contains a lot of data then it will load slowly, usually slower than a regular homepage. This should be taken more as advice than a warning, having a good and responsive single-page design that is not heavily stacked with images or videos in any manner. You can also ease off on the scripts.
Higher the risk higher would be the rewards – Since such sites are not very common, you have a slight risk of discomforting or annoying your user base. Again advice, a single-page website works more like a scroll with CSS3, so design it using its strength.
It is difficult to get the right site architecture – While the methods for creating multi-page websites are tried and tested, it can be a difficult job to get it right for a single-page website. It is important to segment the information which can easily become very confusing on one page.
