Your website design needs to communicate your business objectives well.
Every aspect of your website design is crucial in achieving this goal, which is why choosing between a single-page vs. a multi-page website design can also be difficult. Unified, single-page websites present all the pertinent information about your business in one simple scroll. Meanwhile, multi-page websites provide traditional navigation links and are more popular with most users.
Both design formats carry a number of advantages and disadvantages. In this article, we’re going to weigh in those pros and cons and help you determine which works best for your website.
Single Page Website
Simply put, a single page is a website that contains all information on a single page. It’s a website that only has one HTML page.
Single-page websites fully load the information the customer needs right away. This design format has increasingly become more popular in recent years because it’s simple, fluid, and often mobile-responsive. All you have to do is to scroll down or click on navigation links to jump to certain sections of the page.
Single-page websites aim to provide the right amount of information for a user to read and decide on it. The information they contain is short, concise, and straight to the point with an impactful call to action. This is the reason why the single-page website design is often used in landing pages, portfolios, event pages, and campaign microsites.
PROS:
Content is presented in a simple, easy, and straightforward manner
Content is easy to digest
The design immerses the user in a linear journey. There is a clear beginning, middle, and end.
Great for mobile-responsive designs since all you have to do is scroll
Tends to have a higher conversion rate compared to larger multi-page websites
Easier to implement and maintain
CONS:
The ability to scale is limited
Not great for SEO since the content is limited. This can result in decreased user engagement
Can load slower depending on the amount of content it contains
Multi-page Website
A multi-page website is your traditional website that houses multiple subpages within a menu. These are websites that typically contain a homepage, an about page, a contact page, and many more. To navigate on a multi-page website, you have to click on tabs or on the links in the given menu.
Multi-page websites house more content than single-page websites, and this content is distributed over several pages. Multi-page websites suit almost any type of project. Since the information is segregated into different pages, this design format can provide users with broader content compared to single-page websites.
PROS:
Has unlimited scalability. You can create as many pages as you like
The navigation system is easy to follow. All users are already familiar with this format
Have great SEO capabilities. With a lot of content to work around with, you can rank for different keywords and optimize one keyword per page.
CONS:
Harder to maintain. You have to make sure that all pages are equally and regularly updated all the time.
Multi-page websites can have a higher bounce rate especially when they load slowly with a heavy amount of content.
The heavier your content gets, the more it gets complicated for your navigation system.
Conclusion
To summarize, a single-page website is great if you want to communicate short and concise content in a straightforward fashion and you want to encourage your users to perform a specific task. On the other hand, a multi-page website works if you have a wide range of content to present, you want to follow a traditional navigation system.
When choosing between a single-page vs. multi-page website, take a content-first approach. Consider what information your users need to know and care about, then take it from there and design accordingly. The important thing is to have clarity in your website design.
