Single page sites can have differing design purposes – to delight and inform, to educate, to persuade, to sell – but they all have one major thing in common – they want to be found.
Our society has been digital for some time; however, with the onset of COVID 19, most websites find themselves in a sink or swim scenario – the water of this metaphor being Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). Successful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies, using either ethical or unethical methods, can bury both competing organizations as well as doing collateral damage to the rankings of unrelated sites. In the case of unethical methodologies, keyword and backlinking spam hurts completely all web content. We’ve all encountered the search engine result that at first seemed like an appropriate response to our query, but we quickly find out that we are victims of click bait. Without a war chest or tech savvy team, those organizations who lost their footing and drown in the SERP have little chance of resuscitation. SERP sounds like a swamp because that is what it is – murky, suffocating, and full of scum.
Enter the one-page website. The brevity and streamlined content ensure users receive the most relevant information, while being provided an easy to access and intuitive call to action – such as a contact form. There is another reason in particular that individuals and organizations create one page sites – speed, responsiveness, and real estate. One page sites are light weight and quickly accessible from mobile devices, which make up the majority of online search devices across almost all industries. They are also much easier to make responsive, as the content is usually monothematic/monolithic and linear. Google, in particular, punishes websites for a lack of mobile responsiveness and speed by burying them in the SERP. Users themselves are unlikely to remain on the page if it fails to load within a few seconds, or content shifts are too jarring. Ever click on a site, and the images and text bounce around until you finally click on something – only to find out it is the wrong link or an ad? Most of this information is common knowledge.
More than all of this, however, is the notion of real estate. For example, a single landing page can be duplicated thousands of times for one company. Each landing page will contain variations in location data such as zip code, city, etc. They also contain a treasure chest of alt text, keywords and key phrases hidden throughout the content in order to increase the probability of a search engine match. Most disheartening is that ADA legislation has been unable to protect the disabled from getting mired in misleading alt text.
These one page sites are quick to launch, and assist with the domain authority of the main company or individual’s website. Talk about cheap server space! They are meant to drive traffic in a specific direction, and generate leads – all reacting to searches like “cheapest tv williamsport pa”, “tacos near me”, or “bike shop 17702”. Hero sections “above the fold” grab and engage users. One would think it’s a form of engineering – but really it’s just a hack – a very professional and lucrative hack supported by applications such as Mozilla, Google Analytics & Data Studio, thousands of sketchy SEO companies, and so forth. That is not to say one-page websites are evil by any means, but they can be covertly used to divert and mislead users, like ninja stars.
For the sake of it’s brand, Google attempts to regulate SEO practices and punish those who abuse them. However, many smaller companies without online marketing strategy and resources, especially nonprofits who have no product to sell, drown in SERP due to site bloat, lack of responsiveness, speed, and real estate. Much of this is affected by paid ads, however those sites optimized for local organic SEO should be able to overcome these challenges if nurtured long term.
Here are a few one-page websites reviewed for the speed, responsiveness, and layout efficacy needed to make the SERP cut:
Design by the Designer:
Olivia Sisinni’s page checks most of the boxes. It’s engaging – the main purpose and call to action is above the fold. However, the time it takes for a mobile user to load the page and being able to interact with it scores extremely low. Site responsiveness appears good for newer generation phones, however the content shifts and TTFB would send older generation mobile device users to the ER.
This may not matter for her demographic and industry, but for other organizations catering to older age brackets and lower incomes, this may have negative consequences for her business. Most likely, people searching for her services will be using a laptop or desktop, so she has some process window to prioritize design over speed. In a search result for “digital designer in philadelphia pa” – her page was no where to be found. This could be due in part to an over-saturated market or large amount of online sites consolidating design services – however, there is really no reason why she should not populate within the first three page results for that string.
Though, as she is most likely competing in a domestic or international market, her focus should still be on optimizing page speed, where form should follow function – until she meets a developer.
The architect’s build:
This one-page site is characteristic of a local landing page created to target a specific clientele familiar with the “product” – in this case, a set of condos. The site performs moderately better than the Olivia Sisinni page, but is still disappointing for a site meant to be minimal and light, with the advantage of a CSS style sheet catering to only one page that should result in faster loading (when optimized).
In terms of responsiveness, the site is aesthetically pleasing on both the Moto G4 as well as the iPhone 6/7/8 generations. However, render-blocking resources (inefficient CSS and JavaScript) cause the font loading to become disrupted, resulting in a shaky screen load.
Since this company appears to cater to young individuals and couples, this would potentially hurt the site’s traffic. Because this company’s product is only for local real estate, they aren’t generally competing in a larger market. Additionally, real estate ranks the lowest for mobile device searches, which means most customers will not experience the lag and disruption.
In a search for “real estate near city park denver colorado”, The Victor failed to populate in the first three pages of search results. This cause could be similar to Olivia Sisinni, but most likely it is a lack of optimization and relevant content.
In this case, function should follow form.
Finally, we have ThreeSixtyEight’s Project Turntable:
Project Turntable is a landing page by ThreeSixtyEight, a design agency in Baton Rouge. They have no women listed on their design, development or leadership teams, which shows in the masculine and aggressive design elements such as bold and solid colors, hard/disruptive content shifts, heavy focus on animation over content, and digital san serif fonts. They cater to companies whose reactive clientele have short attention spans and respond to platitudes over meaning, images over text, games over purpose – and they are definitely out to prove their coding skills to the young, beer drinking crowd.
The cumulative layout shift is very low, which means that the viewing and interactive process should have less disruptions as the content loads. However, their intended design embeds animation in almost every element – so it takes some patience to find actual content. Most likely, their clients’ clientele are using mobile devices to search for their services in between bars, so these elements are very important to their success.
Overall they scored much better in performance tests than the previous two one page websites. Given that they are a team of website warriors, the search was focused on their home site rather than the landing page. In a search for “digital marketing baton rouge” and “web design baton rouge”, the ThreeSixtyEight company website failed to populate within the first three search engine results pages. This was actually very surprising coming from these digital ninjas.
In this case, form is equally important to function – and they seem to do that well for their market and product.
I hope you enjoyed this assessment!
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