The meaning of a Single Page Website is all the data and information of your website displays in a single web page. Which means your entire website contains only one page. All the content of common pages in Multiple Page Websites like About Us, Products & Services, Contact Us pages can categorize and organize under several sections in Single Page Website concept. This was a huge trend in the past years. But today most of the designers and developers have recognized some major disadvantages of this concept and most of the Clients are not aware. We will discuss some of those disadvantages one by one.
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01. Organizing, UX and UI
Organizing the content and Designing the web template while considering UX is the most important challenge in Single Page Websites. Single Page Website is like copying a 20GB file to a 10GB flash drive. It can be a Single page, but you have to display the content of Multiple web pages on one web page. To do that, you have to prepare all the important and wanted content according to a prominent structure.
In Single Page Websites, site visitors must feel that they are exploring something or they are going a journey while scrolling the website. Because there are no boundaries in this concept. It is like a flow or storyline. So designers must design the template in a usable way. The designer has to separate the sections of the web page (About Us, Products, Services, Clients, Projects, Reviews, Contact Us etc.) very clearly.
But if the site visitor was lost among the website content, Confused or Failed to recognize a section from another section it will be a huge negative impact for the website.
02. Too Much Height
Height is the most annoying fact in a Single Page Website. Because as we mentioned earlier, you have to display the content of Multiple web pages on one web page. If there are lot of content in your Single page website, the height of the web page will increase. Some of the users do not like to scroll too much. When it comes to small scale devices like Mobile Phones, the height of the web page will be increased at least 5 more times hight. Because the width of a mobile phone is very small rather than a Desktop computer or a Laptop.
03. Too Much Content
As a result of having too much content in a Single Page Website, site visitors will little-bit exhausted to refer all the content at once. Furthermore, they will not have a chance to get an idea about the whole website very quickly.
Assume you sale some Product Items in your business. Assume a person is looking for exact product items for an urgent matter. If your website contains multiple web pages, he will visit the Home Page first and then he will go to the Products page. But if you have a Single page website, the site visitors has to refer all the unwanted content by scrolling down the web page, to get to the Product items section. Or else the site visitor will leave the website before he reaches the Product items section. Because he or she is in a hurry.
If a site visitor has a small amount of Data, it is difficult to expect that he or she will refer the website to the very end.
04. Longer Loading Time
If your Single Page Website contains a lot of images and videos, your website will take a bit longer to load. Because of the heavy content and file sizes. If the site visitor has a slow internet connection, he or she might leave the website very quickly.
05. Can't Share a Specific Content
If a site visitor founds an interesting area on your website, he or she will not able to share that particular part from a link with others. Because it is difficult for visitors to share specific content from your website. Hence all the content are on the same web page and every site visitor has to refer that specific content from the same landing or starting point.
06. Huge Blast in SEO
Creating a single web page website will be a huge blast in SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO means displaying our website as the first result in the first page among the Web Search Results of a Search Engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex etc.).
Let's take a small example. Assume you want to create a Restaurant website. You serve Indian food, Japanese food, Chinese food, Italian food and Thai food to the customers. Then we can use one web page for Indian food. One web page for Japanese food. One web page for Chinese food. One web page for Italian food. One web page for Thai food. As a result of that, we have 5 options. We are targeting to take "Indian Food" category page in the first web results page in Search Engines. But if we failed to do that, we have four other options. Then we can target the "Japanese Food" page. If it is failed, then we can try "Chinese Food" page. But if you have One page website, your one and only hope or option will be that web page. If we failed to take it to the top, then we have no other options left.
We have discussed some several other disadvantages above. If Google detected that your website has a high bounce rate (Visitors leaves the website within a few seconds), Google will automatically drop your website from Search Results.
That is the frontend scenario. When we analyze the backend scenario, web developers will face to lot of SEO limitations in coding and optimizing. Some of those limitations are as follows.
01. Lack of Meta Keywords
02. Lack of Meta Descriptions
03. Lack of Web Pages / Internal URLs
04. Lack of Content
05. Lack of Title Tags
06. Lack of Alt Tags
07. Short Sitemap List etc.
You can get a complete idea and knowledge about this part from our Search Engine Optimization article.
07. Incomplete Analytic Reports
If you have a Single page website, you will be not able to analyze engagement points or behaviours of the site visitors from Analytics reports (Eg - Google Analytics). Because there is only one web page on your website and there are no other URLs to follow. As a result of that, your analytics reports can't detect the content that your site visitors have seen.
08. Newbies Beware !
This is a fun fact. The price of a website depends on several facts. It can be different from one web developing company / person to another web developing company / person. Most of the inexperienced individual developers or newbies calculate the total price of their websites per page. For example, if he takes Rs. 8000 to a web page, he can earn Rs. 40 000 from a 5 page website. But if he develops a Single web page website, he can earn Rs. 8000 only. If the Single web page website contains 5 sections like Introduction, About Us, Products, Services and Contact Us, it means he had developed 5 web pages inside a Single web page. According to that, his loss is Rs. 32 000. But he can not proves his hard work for the client, because of his own calculation or logic.
01. Organizing, UX and UI
Organizing the content and Designing the web template while considering UX is the most important challenge in Single Page Websites. Single Page Website is like copying a 20GB file to a 10GB flash drive. It can be a Single page, but you have to display the content of Multiple web pages on one web page. To do that, you have to prepare all the important and wanted content according to a prominent structure.
In Single Page Websites, site visitors must feel that they are exploring something or they are going a journey while scrolling the website. Because there are no boundaries in this concept. It is like a flow or storyline. So designers must design the template in a usable way. The designer has to separate the sections of the web page (About Us, Products, Services, Clients, Projects, Reviews, Contact Us etc.) very clearly.
But if the site visitor was lost among the website content, Confused or Failed to recognize a section from another section it will be a huge negative impact for the website.
02. Too Much Height
Height is the most annoying fact in a Single Page Website. Because as we mentioned earlier, you have to display the content of Multiple web pages on one web page. If there are lot of content in your Single page website, the height of the web page will increase. Some of the users do not like to scroll too much. When it comes to small scale devices like Mobile Phones, the height of the web page will be increased at least 5 more times hight. Because the width of a mobile phone is very small rather than a Desktop computer or a Laptop.
03. Too Much Content
As a result of having too much content in a Single Page Website, site visitors will little-bit exhausted to refer all the content at once. Furthermore, they will not have a chance to get an idea about the whole website very quickly.
Assume you sale some Product Items in your business. Assume a person is looking for exact product items for an urgent matter. If your website contains multiple web pages, he will visit the Home Page first and then he will go to the Products page. But if you have a Single page website, the site visitors has to refer all the unwanted content by scrolling down the web page, to get to the Product items section. Or else the site visitor will leave the website before he reaches the Product items section. Because he or she is in a hurry.
If a site visitor has a small amount of Data, it is difficult to expect that he or she will refer the website to the very end.
04. Longer Loading Time
If your Single Page Website contains a lot of images and videos, your website will take a bit longer to load. Because of the heavy content and file sizes. If the site visitor has a slow internet connection, he or she might leave the website very quickly.
05. Can't Share a Specific Content
If a site visitor founds an interesting area on your website, he or she will not able to share that particular part from a link with others. Because it is difficult for visitors to share specific content from your website. Hence all the content are on the same web page and every site visitor has to refer that specific content from the same landing or starting point.
06. Huge Blast in SEO
Creating a single web page website will be a huge blast in SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO means displaying our website as the first result in the first page among the Web Search Results of a Search Engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex etc.).
Let's take a small example. Assume you want to create a Restaurant website. You serve Indian food, Japanese food, Chinese food, Italian food and Thai food to the customers. Then we can use one web page for Indian food. One web page for Japanese food. One web page for Chinese food. One web page for Italian food. One web page for Thai food. As a result of that, we have 5 options. We are targeting to take "Indian Food" category page in the first web results page in Search Engines. But if we failed to do that, we have four other options. Then we can target the "Japanese Food" page. If it is failed, then we can try "Chinese Food" page. But if you have One page website, your one and only hope or option will be that web page. If we failed to take it to the top, then we have no other options left.
We have discussed some several other disadvantages above. If Google detected that your website has a high bounce rate (Visitors leaves the website within a few seconds), Google will automatically drop your website from Search Results.
That is the frontend scenario. When we analyze the backend scenario, web developers will face to lot of SEO limitations in coding and optimizing. Some of those limitations are as follows.
01. Lack of Meta Keywords
02. Lack of Meta Descriptions
03. Lack of Web Pages / Internal URLs
04. Lack of Content
05. Lack of Title Tags
06. Lack of Alt Tags
07. Short Sitemap List etc.
You can get a complete idea and knowledge about this part from our Search Engine Optimization article.
07. Incomplete Analytic Reports
If you have a Single page website, you will be not able to analyze engagement points or behaviours of the site visitors from Analytics reports (Eg - Google Analytics). Because there is only one web page on your website and there are no other URLs to follow. As a result of that, your analytics reports can't detect the content that your site visitors have seen.
08. Newbies Beware !
This is a fun fact. The price of a website depends on several facts. It can be different from one web developing company / person to another web developing company / person. Most of the inexperienced individual developers or newbies calculate the total price of their websites per page. For example, if he takes Rs. 8000 to a web page, he can earn Rs. 40 000 from a 5 page website. But if he develops a Single web page website, he can earn Rs. 8000 only. If the Single web page website contains 5 sections like Introduction, About Us, Products, Services and Contact Us, it means he had developed 5 web pages inside a Single web page. According to that, his loss is Rs. 32 000. But he can not proves his hard work for the client, because of his own calculation or logic.
By : Danula Randika Wickramaarachchi
From : Sri Lanka
Published Date : 2019.07.06
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