I’m often asked what it costs to make a ‘one-page website’. You know the kind of thing – no separate tabs, just a single scrolling page made up of full-width sections and a contact form at the end. The reason people ask this is that web developers used to charge by the page, which led to the misconception that a one-page website could be made more cheaply than, say, a five- or ten-page website.
Sadly, it doesn’t really work that way. In fact, it turns out that if that single page is split into functional sections we can end up with the equivalent of a dozen or more ‘pages’. During the design process each one of these sections will be revised dozens if not hundreds of times. For a project of medium size, that’s a mimimum of 20 hours’ work. And then it has to be tested to make sure it works on different screen sizes, that the links are correct, that the text is good for search engines… you get the picture. Really good websites can’t be made for nothing!
A much better starting position is to ask which sort of experience is best for your visitor, reader or client.
While one-page is fine for mobile scrolling, the horizontal aspect of desktops and laptops tends towards a more exploratory kind of experience. So if you have a lot of information, data or images, you might want to look at a way of presenting it all which is organized but not overwhelming. In this case, a menu, a search bar, tabs, and so on, all come into their own and can make a visit to your website a much more interactive and engaging experience. This is particularly the case for e-commerce (online shopping if you prefer).
That’s why, when you’re budgetting, you should always consider your customer’s journey. Are they going through a simple booking process and finally hitting a contact button? Then one-page may well be fine. But when you want to engage the customer and – critically – keep them interested in what you have to offer, maybe start to consider a wider angle.