Why a One-Page Website is Bad News for Your Business

Posted on Jun 5 2016 - 8:14am by Editor

Most businesses recognise the important of having a website. People today spend an enormous amount of time online, so it is usually the first place they look if they want to learn more about a business or buy products. If you don’t have a website, your business will miss out on potential business, but if the world of website building is a mystery to you, you might be tempted to create a simple one-page website with the aid of a free website builder package. Unfortunately, this could prove to be your downfall.

WebsiteOne-page websites are very popular with new start-ups and smaller businesses that have no online experience whatsoever. However, whilst a one-page website is better than no website at all, it has a number of disadvantages and you are much better off paying a web development company to design and build you a bespoke website.

Website SEO

Single page offerings fall down in a number of regards, but the main problem is that a one-page website has virtually no content whatsoever. Search engines like Google love content. The bigger your website is the better. More pages equal more content, so a multi-page website is always going to perform better than a single page site with very little meaningful content.

Keywords are the cornerstone of search engine optimisation. Without a decent smattering of relevant keywords and key phrases, search engines are not going to have a clue what your website is all about, which means they will probably ignore it. If you don’t have much content on your website, you are unlikely to have enough keywords there. Ultimately this will harm your SEO efforts.

No Space to Sell the Company

With only one page to work with, how on earth are you going to fit everything in?

Website visitors are looking for all kinds of information, from company facts such as opening hours, to product details and job vacancies. It isn’t easy to figure out the best position for each section when there is very little space. Do you put company information above product and service details? These questions are difficult enough to answer when you have many pages available, as there is not necessarily a perfect solution. One thing is certain, however: one-page is definitely not enough space to sell your company.

A Lack of Meaningful Information

Website analytics are extremely useful. You can use figures generated from Google Analytics or similar tools to work out which pages are the most successful, which ones have high bounce rates, and which ones have the best conversion rates. Working with a single-page website is a lot more difficult. You are juggling in the dark because you never really how your visitors interact with the site and if the bounce rate is high, why this is the case.

One-page websites work OK as an interim measure, particularly if the alternative is no website at all, but don’t rely on a single page website working for your business in the long term.