Your Thoughts on One Page Designs
I have been studying one page designs this week and am quite fascinated by them. It’s interesting to see when the best times to apply them are and when they simply do not work. I will go into much more depth next week, but for now I would love to get your opinion on them. Do you find them appropriate and if so for which situations would use them?
Also if you could provide me with some examples that would really kick some ass.
Related reading:
Personally, I think one-pagers are some of the hardest designs to pull of. In order for them to really, really work - they need to be outstanding. And of course, the boys at Fish Marketing did that without a problem…
By Kyle on May 26, 2006 2:34 am
Technically not just one page, but one is all you need (and it was designed that way) is pandora.com. A really interesing approach to internet radio.
By don on May 26, 2006 2:53 am
I think that although it’s not “technically” a one page design since it has so many links, Fitness Made Simple is an excellent example of a site that really manages to sum up the life of John Basedow in a single URL.
By Mike D. on May 26, 2006 2:54 am
Actually, I withdraw that latest comment after realizing that this interior page is an equally powerful testament to the man, the myth, and the muscles.
By Mike D. on May 26, 2006 2:58 am
popurls is the one that comes to my mind, and seems to work well as a one page design.
By KarmaDude on May 26, 2006 3:08 am
This seems to be the current hot topic of web design - a big collection of links here: http://www.designmeltdown.com/chapters/OnePageSites/
By Mathew Patterson on May 26, 2006 3:09 am
One-pagers are great, as long as there’s not too much information. This is also the best part, since such pages force you to reconsider the importance of every sentence, making your content better.
Too few one-pagers take use of named anchors for navigation. I can imagine people visiting such a site not finding what they want, as there is no clue to what you should do.
As a designer, I’ve always found one-pagers easier to develop. It reminds me of print, as they allow more experimenting. You can format, position and lay out content perfectly, since no other content will ever be there.
In lack of bookmarks, the only example that comes to mind is my own site:
http://www.bjorkoy.com
By Olav on May 26, 2006 3:09 am
Also, my recent one page business site redesign has made a measurable difference in conversion for me. That is: more people contacting me, more people signing up for the newsletter than with the old site.
I suspect t a lot of the benefit comes from tighter copy - when you are trying to fit it all into one page, there is no space for waffling text.
By Mathew Patterson on May 26, 2006 3:12 am
I definately like one pagers, I think it works best for small companys, like advertising agencies, and design firms. But as others have said it is really hard to pull it nicely off, but it surely can be done :)
By Alexander Kinnunen on May 26, 2006 4:03 am
They make sense, after all most sites are just filled with fluff anyways. I mean how much content do you actually read if you visit let’s say, a web design firm’s site for example? Probably not much.
I like http://www.tundro.com
By Cameron on May 26, 2006 4:33 am
I think 1-page designs are really great, especially for small sites and portfolios. A favourite is the one designed by Shaun Inman, which was obviously way ahead of its time of the 1-page boom is now ;-).
http://morellc.com/
Matt
By Matt Dempsey on May 26, 2006 5:49 am
I sort of agree with Olav, it just depends on the amount of content you have. If you only have 1 page of content, it is pointless to make a multi-page site (unless you expect the content to grow significantly) and it will be more effective as one page.
Then of course you have one page sites that use javascript to show/hide sections. Which I suppose are half way between one page and multi-page sites. Maybe with the growth of things like Ajax, the traditional model of reloading the whole page will start to change anyway?
By Ben Hayes on May 26, 2006 5:52 am
One page designs definitely have their place. One fantastic example that comes to mind is http://www.ellingtoncms.com/.
It gets right to the point all in one page.
By Chris Harrison on May 26, 2006 8:07 am
I think they are appropriate more often than not. A lot of the 1-page websites are effective because they only include the necessary information, and don’t make you click all over the place to find it.
I actually just did one for myself the other day…I’m trying to sell my truck.
My Black S10
By Kyle Posey on May 26, 2006 8:55 am
Nathan Smith recently did an excellent one-pager:
http://healmassage.com/
His write up here:
http://sonspring.com/journal/launch-heal-massage
By Dan Perdue on May 26, 2006 9:06 am
One of my favorites is HellDesign’s one-page portfolio site.
Very well designed and executed.
By Jay Jones on May 26, 2006 9:21 am
URL would be nice… here it is… http://en.helldesign.pl/
By Jay Jones on May 26, 2006 9:34 am
Some great examples so far, thanks very much.
By Scrivs on May 26, 2006 9:39 am
This one page thing is new to me. Very good idea!
Information is all there.
Great examples people!
By J.r. on May 26, 2006 11:29 am
[...] Your Thoughts on One Page Designs » Wisdump [...]
By Your Thoughts on One Page Designs » Wisdump at Jason E. Shao on May 26, 2006 11:48 am
I’m also fascinated by one page sites that manage to fit in quite a bit of information but not clutter the design. I’ve been noticing more and more of them lately, and a few that caught my eye which have been mentioned already include Hell Design, Olav’s site and Fish Marketing.
I’m surprised no one mentioned Bryan Veloso’s Bowling Extravaganza minisite from SXSW this year. Then there’s all the Refreshing Cities such as Refresh Dallas, Refresh Houston and Refresh Buffalo.
One of my favorite minisites is Dan Cederholm’s Chameleon site featuring his tiny color-changing icons. And speaking of icons, there’s always Matt Brett’s Feed Icons minisite.
I could probably name a few more, but I think that’s enough for the time being.
By Patrick Haney on May 26, 2006 11:49 am
I think the one page site is difficult to acheive only when you are not clear as to your sites mewssage and purpose,
but when you are, the benefits are huge.
I feel the boys at cuban council have it nailed.
At Stellio LLC. , we went to a one page site format at the beginning of this year. As a design firm its a bit easier to work within the constraints of the page whereas the content is more often than not already provided. The format has worked well for us and moving forward we are going to be adding new features and sections all while remaining a one page format.
A one page blog style site where conent is being generated a much more rapid serve would be a lot harder to pull off, but still fully possible.
The only downside to a one page site is the amount of links you wont have in the search engines. The plus of running a deep site is that your inbound links can be driven by any number of parts of content/ pages on your site, where as a one page site makes it harder to do that.
Maybe a way around this is to create internal links which are fully accessible to your users to link back to… # references etc…
Great links everyone.
By Matt St. Gelais on May 26, 2006 12:30 pm
From a business perspective this mirrors a brochure more than anything. But from a web design business perspective, it might be hard to get much $ out of a project like this, ESPECIALLY since they (the customer) only see 1 page and think its easy.
By Brian Breslin on May 26, 2006 12:33 pm
http://www.solobar.net/
By jay on May 26, 2006 12:41 pm
I don’t know if I would call the design outstanding, but it’s not bad and it certainly gets the job done: Lightbox JS v2.0.
By Joe Lencioni on May 26, 2006 2:03 pm
http://www.cubancouncil.com/ has to be mentioned as well.
By Samo on May 26, 2006 7:15 pm
If you can demonstrate better results - more sales or signups or whatever - then you can charge accordingly.
By Mathew Patterson on May 26, 2006 7:53 pm
[...] Wisdump [...]
By FTOFANI // blog » Sobre links e tempo demais na empresa on May 27, 2006 3:44 pm
wow, there are some really great examples here. Normally I’m completely turned-off by one page designs, but these, these are definitely not a turn-off. thanks for posting this.
By mel on May 28, 2006 7:01 pm
hmm… i’m not sure, but i will link my site: http://www.planeador.net
By Sebastian on May 30, 2006 8:39 am
On the topic of sites that use Javascript/AJAX to show content, maybe this is a good example? portfolio.christianmontoya.com
By Montoya on May 31, 2006 10:49 pm
31 comments and still, no one can touch Basedow.
By Mike D. on June 5, 2006 2:48 am
i apologize in advance for the digression; what is a good open forum in which usability issues may be discussed? i am specifically looking for insight on a form laid out vertically vs. broken into two columns. thanks.
By bumbum on June 6, 2006 10:31 am