This is a guest post from EYEMAGINE. EYEMAGINE is an eCommerce innovator. We build scalable, durable, and beautifully designed eCommerce experiences. Some of the worlds largest brands trust us to raise eCommerce sales, drive eCommerce conversions, and enhance eCommerce user experience.

You may have noticed that many companies today are taking advantage of the design trend referred to as “single page design”. If the name doesn’t give it away, a single page site loads and contains all of the site’s content on one page.  Single page designs are built for ease of user experience and are often used as informational content sites, microsites, or as a unique page of a larger site. The “infinite scrolling” design technique is commonly employed in these single page designs. (For an award-winning example of a single page site done right, check out www.kitkat.com/android/.)

If you’re an online business owner and are exploring new ways to drive inbound traffic and conversions, you may be eager to learn how to take advantage of this type of layout. Here are 5 reasons that single page design might be a good fit for your company, if you?re considering a fresh inbound commerce strategy:

I – Great First Impressions

First impressions are critical to a highly effective web design strategy. The key to decreasing your bounce rate is to engaging your users right away, making navigation easy so that they stay on your site for longer. A visitor’s attention span can easily be swayed away from the website if it doesn’t instantly grab their attention. A single page design is built to intrigue your visitors for further exploration; the uniqueness of the single page layout and easy navigation pulls your visitors through the site content with ease. With a clean and constantly updated homepage, a single page site can give the visitor a clear idea of what the entire brand and website is all about within seconds of getting to the site.  Immediately impress your visitors with your web design trend prowess, and they will be persuaded to convert from lead to customer.

Throughout the article, we’ll be referencing a single page eCommerce microsite that the EYEMAGINE team built with the purpose of converting online visitors to customers, www.hubspotintegration.com. As shown above, the site’s main header quickly grabs the site visitor’s attention, and continues to guide them through a one-page informational journey of the offering.

II – Interactivity

Single page websites incorporate many interactive elements to drive the user to continue scrolling through the entirety of the site. Sound effects, music, animations, and even story telling elements can be presented through a single page design. Instead of being “just another website,” many single page designed sites act as interactive, digital experiences. Exceptionally creative and innovative single page sites can even garner worldwide attention, media coverage, and industry awards. In short, single page websites can offer an expansive canvas for interactivity that multi-page websites don’t.

The gear icon in the image above applies the principal of interactivity with an animation that “rolls” it into view as soon as the visitor scrolls to that section of the site. Interactivity can stimulate a visitor’s emotions and encourage repeat visits and positive word of mouth. Getting the visitors active, engaged, and involved with your website and brand is one of the big keys to succeeding at gaining consumer trust. Single page designs also make use of engaging and interactive navigational elements, scrolling you innovatively from one part of the page the next. Again, referring back to www.hubspotintegration.com, you can see the site has several interactive elements. Animations activate as the user scrolls through the website’s content to further engage them and drive them through the entire site.

III – Simplicity – makes navigation easy

Good user experience and easy site navigation often go hand-in-hand. Single page sites are known for their simplicity and straightforward navigation. When designed correctly, single page layouts can be orderly and inviting. People generally love simple website layouts, and with a single page layout, content is easy to find.

People are initially drawn to sites like Facebook and YouTube because of their design simplicity and accessibility. When simple sites add other features to complicate their original, easy-to-use interface, there tends to be a bit of backlash from users. Once eCommerce and content websites are deemed “unnecessarily overcomplicated,” they will ultimately become unfavorably received by the masses.

Simple single page websites can be surprisingly effective for delivering content or driving a user to action. These sites don’t bombard you with paragraph after paragraph of details and statistics; the content is presented in a polished and thought-out manner. A single page site can get its point across without bogging the website down with unnecessary content. If the imagery or iconography in the site is effective and explanatory, minimal copy is required to get the point across.

Simplicity is one of the key elements of flat design, which has become ever popular in the past few years, and it stays true to this simple design philosophy. The internet can often feel like one giant, cluttered mess, but with the combination of both flat and single page website design, websites become friendly and inviting. When applied properly, these techniques will drive your site visitors to conversion.

IV – Calls-to-Action

Call-to-action (CTA) buttons are used in inbound marketing when the prospective customer is prompted to perform an action, such as following a link or making a purchase. Many single page websites contain calls-to-actions to various offers. Having noticeable add-to-cart, checkout, contact us, get started, or download now buttons is highly effective in single page web designs.

Eliminating unnecessary content, creating less page clutter, and drawing customers to these call-to-action commands will increase conversions and effectiveness for your single page site. These calls-to-action must be prominent and easily visible. They give your customers a clear idea of what their next step should be; a customer shouldn?t have to actively look around the page for these calls-to-action.

You can clearly see the call-to-action in the above example.  Calls-to-action should be clear, descriptive, and relevant to your offer.  The final call-to-action reads: “Try the connector free for 30 days. Start your FREE trial.” The CTA uses bright colors with a dark background, making it hard to miss and drawing attention to it. The bold FREE in the CTA button copy also gathers plenty of attention for buyers looking for a promotion. The CTA employs the persistent scrolling web design technique; it scrolls along the top navigational bar throughout the website.

V – Professionalism

Well-designed single page websites take time, money, and effort to provide strong results. Operating and maintaining a website that employs current web design techniques will set you apart from your competition, give your online presence a profession air, and let your visitors know that you mean business. Having a fresh site design requires either a team of internal development resources to code the website, or access to an experienced interactive agency that is technically proficient enough to develop and design it.

If you’re debating whether or not you want to use a single page web design strategy, the next step is finding a team who can help you execute.  If you don’t already have a big developement team on board, you can reach out to our team for a 30 minute website evaluation to help you assess the perfect web design strategy.

What does it all mean?

Single page websites can make a great first impression and lend an air of professionalism to your brand. The simplicity of a single page paired with flat design can help bring in new visitors and help your brand connect directly with those interested in the brand. Most of all, it’s a memorable experience that sticks out above the rest of the web and keeps users focused and engaged.

The Performance Perspective, From Yottaa:

As marketers, we love single page design.  But as web performance obsessives, we are more cautious.  That’s because one inevitable consequence of the single page design is the creation of very long pages. These long pages require special attention from a web performance standpoint.  Without performance optimization, lots of time and browser processing effort will be wasted loading up all of the content that exists “below the fold” before the user can scroll down to see it. This can defeat the purpose of creating an interesting, engaging page, because many users will bounce quickly because of the sluggish performance.  Methods like lazy loading of content are essential to achieving a fast page load and an engaging single page design.

The site referenced throughout this post, www.hubspotintegration.com, is a great example of lazy loading in action. The site achieves a sub-2 second display time since it loads only what’s visible in the user’s viewport right away. Then, while the user is busy reading and engaging with the site, other content loads in piecemeal, ensuring a smooth experience with no interruptions or waiting time.  Lazy loading techniques can be hard-coded into your site with JavaScript using plugins, like this one and this one.
Another option is Yottaa: Yottaa applies these techniques like lazy loading on the fly, without touching the source code, so they can easily be refined or replicated across other pages. To learn more, see our page on Application Sequencing.