BUT IT CAN’T ALL BE ROSES, RIGHT? WHAT ABOUT THE CONS?
SEO setbacks
One of the major and most widely referenced pitfalls of one-page sites is their incompatibility with staple SEO tool Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a great resource for collecting information on which pagesyour website users are most interested in and engaged with. On the flip side, this also means you can observe which pages aren’t doing so well, too.
The thing is, with a one-page site, you can’t retrieve that information as there is, ultimately, only one page to visit. Identifying which areas of your content require attention is therefore not entirely straightforward.
Luckily, there is an easy solution to this problem. Plenty of websites – such as hotjar – now offer heatmap tracking tools, which are of great use if you want to get some data regarding how users are interacting with your one-page site.
Scrolling overload
Visitors of one-page sites may be required to scroll the entire length of the site in order to find the information they’re looking for. If the site lacks engaging content and a streamlined design, this can be a frustrating experience for users and can result in them ditching their efforts and exiting the site.
Fortunately, there are plenty of solutions to this. Many platforms such as WordPress offer themes designed for single-page sites. These themes can include options to create more streamlined user experiences, such as the option to include a sticky menu that can be utilised by visitors to drop down quickly to certain sections of the homepage. A “scroll to top” button can also be helpful, too!
Loading delays, zzz
Having all of your content on one page can make way, way to longer loading times. This means visitors may have to sit and wait for everything to load before they can browse your site, meaning they may even jump ship before your website wakes up. Even worse, sites with longer loading times can perform poorly in Google rankings as a result.
If you want a hack to get around this, however, you can opt to make use of “lazy loading”, which reduces page weight and allows for quicker loading times. Ace!