Contrary to common belief, scrolling may be more beneficial for your website as opposed to websites that force the consumer to click in order to navigate. The popular candy brand, Kit-Kat, is a prime example of a company pursuing the single page trend. The reason? Story-telling. Today, selling a product is no longer about the features and benefits the product offers, but rather the story the company conveys and how they connect with consumers.
So how exactly does storytelling benefit your brand? Storytelling creates a persona for your brand or company. The most successful brands today are built around successful emotional connections to consumers. In order to be successful, these emotions elicited must be positive responses. By creating a brand persona your company can express things such as the company’s values, beliefs, and what the product stands for. In order to connect on an emotional level to the brand, the consumer has to relate and align with the brand persona.
Less Is More
Information on single page sites is simplified and focuses primarily on visuals rather than large bodies of texts. This element allows for easy readability while peeking the consumer’s interest.
In addition, limiting information to one page forces you to be clear and concise, another important factor in creating valuable content. Information found on the website should be directly relevant to the consumers wants, needs, and interests. Less text means less information the viewer has to sort through. Therefore, resulting in higher retention rates.
Guided Tour Vs. Reading A Map
Single page websites are comparable to having a tour guide. While multi-page websites are comparable to reading a map on your own. Single page websites allow the company to give a guided tour to potential customers highlighting the most important information and eventually directing them to their destination.
While multi-page websites force consumers in a sense to read a map (aka your website) in search of meeting their wants/needs. So the question is…would you rather be guided directly to your destination or intensively search for it using a map?
What do Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all have in common? Infinite scrolling. Consumers scroll through their phones all day long. But just how much scrolling is that? The average person scrolls 5.03 miles per year on their smartphone or 8.01 kilometers. A single page website offers similarities to the social network sites that consumers engage with every day. This scrolling pattern keeps users engaged as more and more information is continuously revealed as opposed to dead ends and roadblocks.
So why give a guided tour? You have a far less chance of distracting your customers. Distracted customers lead to higher bounce rates. Your goal is to maintain consumer interest for as long as possible. The average attention span of a human plummeted to eight seconds–down from 12 seconds in 2000–which means at nine seconds, goldfish now have a longer attention span than the typical consumer. Meaning, you have 8 seconds to captivate your audience before they wander elsewhere. So do you really want to risk them going off on their own?
Who Benefits?
Next is the practicality reason. As more and more users access the web via their mobile phones the more comparable web pages need to be across different devices. A website that exists exclusively on one page allows for easier navigation across all devices. Additionally, there will be no need to search for tabs that are extended beyond their mobile phone screen.
From a business standpoint, these websites are easier to maintain, take less time to create and cost less to produce. Saving you time and money in the creation of the website. The sooner your website is up, the sooner you are open for business.
Conclusion
Not all users may be fond of this new trend, but it is better to please the majority of your customers than to cater to the minority. Single page websites may not be for every company, particularly those who have a variety of categorized products listed that need distinct separation.
For those who want to tell their brand/product’s story, this may be a great opportunity to entice your customers who are hungry for visually appealing design, simplicity, and easy navigation. The more consumers are engaged, the more likely they will be to purchase your product/service and return to your website in the future.
