A popular website design trend over the last few years are single page, long-form websites. Rather than breaking content up across several pages, single-page sites use different content sections like ‘About Us’, ‘Services’ and ‘Get in Touch’ that load as the users scrolls the page.

Instead of using a traditional navigation at the top of your site, users just scroll through the page and see all of your website’s content in different sections. Alternatively, some single page sites offer ‘anchor-links’ that can quickly jump to a specific section of the page.

Single page websites absolutely have their appeal. They’re quicker an easier to put together, they usually require much less content and they can feel like a simpler option to web design newbies. Unfortunately, as with all things in life, the easiest path is never the right one.

Here are 7 reasons why relying on a single page website for your small business is a very bad idea if you want your business to grow

Single page websites have no page structure, which is a disaster for SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It’s the process of making your website as clear, accessible and user-friendly as possible so that your site appears high up in search results. Great SEO is the key to getting visible online and getting yourself in front of thousands of customers. The best part is, these customers don’t require ‘warming up’ or ‘selling to’; they’re already online searching for exactly what you offer. They know they need you! They just need to find you.

One of the largest contributors to a good SEO score is a clear page structure. Having multiple pages that are clearly labelled and grouped together shows Google and other search engines how your website (and business) works! This allows them to show your website off to the most relevant users. Single page websites cram all of that important information onto a single page, meaning Google can’t understand or categorise your website appropriately. This means, the next time someone Googles something relevant to your industry, you’ll be nowhere to be found as search engines weren’t able to understand your business or your offers.

Single page websites have to load everything at once, making them slow & frustrating to use

If you want anyone to actually visit your website, it needs to load super fast! The ideal loading time for websites (particularly on mobile) is only 1-2 seconds. Believe it or not, 54% of mobile site visits are abandoned (we call this Bounce Rate) if a page take longer than 3 seconds to load. Even as little as a 2-second delay in load times resulted in abandonment rates of up to 87%.

When you push all of your website content onto a single page, you increase the size of that page massively compared to a standard ‘About Me’ or ‘Contact’ page. That means that anyone visiting your website has to wait for all of your content to load at once, which will likely take 4x as long as a standard page. If a 2 second delay results in an 87% abandonment rate, how many customers are likely to stick around for 8 seconds?

The beauty of splitting your content across multiple pages is that you you also get to split up that load time. Each new visitor to your site only has to wait for one page to load before they can get stuck in. So if you take all of that content and split it across 6 pages, you’ve essentially split your loading time by 6. This means happier customers, better brand reputation & visibility and increased conversions!

Most web traffic comes from mobile, & single page websites offer a terrible mobile user experience

Smartphones have revolutionised the way we interact with the world. In 2022 60% of all internet usage came from mobile phones, and that percentage is increasing every single year. For websites to work well on mobile screens, they need to squish into a much narrower view. What this usually means is that content is ‘stacked’, making pages much narrower but also much taller to fit all the information onto the screen.

Without a simple navigation menu to help users find specific pages, you’re expecting them to endlessly scroll your entire website worth of content to find what they’re looking for. As we know from the scary loading-time stats above, the vast majority of people will not dedicate this amount of time to deciphering your website or buying from you. Long scrolling is a frustrating user experience, meaning most people will give up and abandon your website before those all-important conversions.

As well as getting in the way of making your business money, this poor user experience also negatively impacts your brand! People will remember how frustrating they found ealing with your business, and you’ll likely lose them for good. It’s important to build strong, happy relationships with your visitors if you ever want a successful business.

Good SEO requires multiple descriptive headings, page titles & descriptions

Back to SEO for a sec (it’s your most important digital marketing tool, after all) to talk about even more limits of a single page website. The way search engines understand the content of your pages and the importance of the statements is by reading your heading tags. In Squarespace, these are known as ‘Heading 1’, ‘Heading 2’ etc. Heading 1 is the most important piece of information on the page - it should be a keyword rich summary that tells Google exactly what this page is all about. For a good SEO score, each page can have only one Heading 1.

If you rely on a single page website, this means you get just one opportunity to properly summarise your entire business. That’s only one opportunity to use your keywords in the most important piece of info. Only one opportunity to grab the attention of your visitors. Only one opportunity to be ranked online appropriately.

Splitting your content across several different pages means you get several opportunities to use those headings, make them keyword rich and improve your online search ranking. The same is true of SEO Titles & Descriptions. These are page titles and descriptions that are used solely for SEO purposes and they’re incredibly useful for boosting your online visibility! A single page site allows you only one of these, where multiple pages allow several - no brainer!

Single page websites bury your important Call-To-Actions and enquiry information

The goal of most websites is simple - to gather conversions. This can be enquiries through your contact form, joining your email list or making a sale, whatever the goals of your business may be. In order to maximise conversions we need to offer multiple opportunities for your users to take that action hence, Call To Action (CTA). This is most often through buttons, links and forms.

When you rely on a single page website for your business, you’re burying those all important CTAs under mountains of other content. Instead of an enquiry form being easy to find right at the top of your ‘Contact’ page, visitors are expected to scroll all the way to the bottom of your already very long web page to find it! Consider that most users will be on their smartphones and that’s A LOT of scrolling. The vast majority of users will abandon ship and you’ll lose out on heaps of great leads.

Being limited to a single page hinders your growth, offers and business potential

In order for your business to be a success, you need the opportunity to evolve and grow. If your website is just one single page, it won’t be able to keep up with your growth and it will massively hinder your progress. You’ll be severely limited when it comes to adding new products or services to your website. If you decide to start a podcast, or collaborate with other businesses, your website won’t be able to remain relevant without updating the whole thing.

Multiple pages offer much more flexibility. You can create new landing pages, set up new services and link from other pages without slowing your website down and even style pages differently. It’s amazing how much your business will evolve over those first months and years. It’s important to have resources that grow with you rather than stopping you from fulfilling your potential.

Investment requires trust but single pages block your customers from researching further

While it may not always feel like it, small businesses have so many advantages over larger brands! One of these advantages being that you’re able to build trust and credibility with your audience in a really effective, personal way. Because your business will operate in a much more 1-1 way, you can lead your business with personality and allow your customers to become part of your unique world.

These personal relationships build trust and engagement with your business, but they require your audience getting to know you. A huge part of this process is research. We want to pique the interest of our customers through social media, emails etc and invite them to dig deeper into our brands. Single page websites limit the amount of research customers are able to do. They can’t learn much more about you, so are unlikely to build those important lasting connections.

Splitting content across multiple pages gives you more space to tell your story, build relationships with your audience and become a much loved and trusted brand.

The bottom line? While a single page website may be a great place to get started with your small business website, focussing on creating a well-structured, content-rich site over multiple pages is the only way to truly grow.

If creating a more visible, better converting, multiple page website sounds like a huge amount of work, we’ve got some amazing news for you: it doesn’t have to be!

By opting to create your site with one of our detailed Squarespace website templates, you can have a multiple page website launched in just a few days! Plus, our templates come with tons of handy extras like an Instagram Links page, plug & play content prompts for super simple copy and an easy to follow video course.

Our Squarespace website templates help you to create a personality-packed, SEO-friendly website that your customers will love to buy from!

Wanna know how they work? Pop us an email at hiya@luckynightstudio.co.uk and we’ll happily answer any questions you may have.

The Disadvantages of One-Page Websites for Your Business