Split the long page into a short home page and one page per product family, each answering one search, with its own photographs, the phone number and a way to ask for a quote.

The site

A window and door installer in the Okanagan, with two installation crews and a small showroom. The whole website is one page, and on a phone it runs to about thirty screens.

From the top: a slideshow of three houses, a welcome paragraph, a grid of twelve products with three lines each, an about section, and six reasons to choose the company.

Below those come sixty gallery photographs, a carousel of reviews, a row of manufacturer logos, a list of towns served, and finally a contact form with a map.

The menu lists Home, Products, Gallery, Reviews and Contact. Each item scrolls the same page to a different point.

It was built a few years ago, when long scrolling layouts were fashionable, and on a large monitor it looks tidy.

The inference a visitor makes

Someone searching for patio door replacement arrives at the top of everything. They see windows in the slideshow, a welcome message, and a grid in which patio doors are one icon out of twelve.

The conclusion they draw is reasonable: patio doors are a sideline here. Three lines on a page mostly about windows suggests a company that fits them now and then.

A homeowner comparing three installers will take more seriously the one whose site has a page about exactly what they need. That is no verdict on workmanship. It is simply the only evidence on offer.

Twelve searches, one page

Search engines rank pages, not websites. Each page is judged on how well it answers a particular search, and this business wants to answer many.

The fifth is the one the page loses most clearly. Fogged glass is an urgent, specific search, and a three-line blurb on a page titled with the company name is never the best answer to it.

The page has one title, one main heading and one description in search results. It can only be about all twelve products at once, which in practice means it is about none of them.

The hunt on a phone

On a phone, the product grid stacks into a single column. Patio doors, ninth in the grid, sit somewhere around screen nine.

The menu barely helps. Products scrolls to the top of the grid, not to the product the visitor came for.

Each scroll is a small decision to keep going. Someone who arrived looking for one thing makes that decision again and again before finding it, and some give up first.

Everything loads at once

A separate page loads what it needs. A single page loads everything: the slideshow, sixty gallery photographs, the review carousel, the logos and the map.

On mobile data that adds up to a heavy page. The visitor who only wanted the phone number waits for photographs of bay windows they will never scroll down to see.

The back button and the shared link

The menu scrolls with a script that leaves the address in the browser unchanged. A visitor who presses back, expecting to return to the products, leaves the site altogether.

Sharing fails the same way. A homeowner who wants to send the patio door section to a partner can only send the address of the whole page, which opens on the slideshow.

Ads that land at the top

The company runs AdWords for windows and doors. Every ad, whatever it promises, leads to the same address.

An ad for entry doors lands on a slideshow of windows. AdWords rates landing pages partly on how relevant they are to the ad, and the visitor makes the same judgement in a couple of seconds.

Analytics that see one page

Analytics counts pages viewed. With only one page, every visit looks alike: one page seen, and most visits recorded as a bounce.

The owner cannot tell whether people came for windows or doors, which products they read about, or where they stopped. The site produces no evidence for the next decision.

A worked example

The window and door installer's quote form asked visitors what they were interested in, and nearly every answer was windows. Door work came mostly through referrals.

The owner had taken that to mean door customers did not search online. The likelier reason was that the site gave them nothing to find: no page, no photographs of doors, no title that mentioned them.

The rebuild kept the look and turned the long page into a short home page and six product pages, each with its own photographs, a few reviews about that product, the phone number and a short quote form.

The sixty gallery photographs were sorted onto the product pages they showed. The list of towns became a service area page, and each ad now points to the page for what it advertises.

The home page still scrolls, but it is a summary a few screens long with links onward, rather than the entire business.

The counter-case within the site

Several things on the long page were right and survived the rebuild: the phone number fixed at the top of every screen, the short reviews, and the plain list of towns served.

A single page is also a reasonable design for a business with one product in one town, or as the landing page for one advertising campaign.

This installer is neither. It sells a dozen things to people who search for them one at a time.

One page per product family, each answering one search, with a short home page leading to them.

What to change

  1. List every product the long page covers.
  2. Group them into the families people search for.
  3. Give each family a page with its own title.
  4. Move photographs to the pages they show.
  5. Put the phone number and form on every page.
  6. Point each ad at its matching page.
  7. Cut the home page to a short summary.

Step three is the change everything else depends on. Until a product has a page of its own, no search, ad or analytics report can treat it as anything but one item among twelve.

The opposite mistake, a first screen with nothing useful on it, is the subject of a landscaper site with a splash page.

Frequently asked questions

Why is a one-page website weak in search?

Search engines rank individual pages. A page covering twelve products has one title and one main topic, so it is rarely the best answer to a search for any one of them.

What does one long page tell a visitor?

That the products given three lines are sidelines. Someone looking for patio doors trusts the installer whose site has a page about patio doors.

Does a long single page slow down phones?

Usually. It loads everything at once, slideshows, galleries and maps included, so a visitor who wanted one product or the phone number waits for all of it.

How should the long page be split?

Into a short home page plus one page per product family, each with its own photographs, reviews, phone number and quote form.

Where should AdWords ads point?

To the page for whatever the ad promises. An ad for entry doors that lands on a slideshow of windows is judged poorly by AdWords and by the visitor.

Is a one-page site ever the right choice?

For a business with one product in one area, or a landing page for one campaign. A business selling many products to separate searches needs separate pages.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Whole business on one long page?

Send us the address. We will map which products need their own page and in what order.

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