One-page or multi-page website: what a small business actually needs
One-page websites put everything on one long page. What you do, examples, prices and contact all sit in a single scroll. Multi-page sites split the same things into pages with a menu. Either can look professional and be built quickly. Pick the wrong one, though, and it shows months later, when the site can't grow or has pages nobody visits.
How people find you matters more here than taste. So does the number of different things you sell.
Quick answer
- One page is enough when you offer one main thing, people find you by your name or by word of mouth, and the content changes rarely.
- Separate pages pay off when you offer several services that people search for one by one, or you serve several places.
- A blog, a menu or news that changes often needs pages of its own.
- Starting with one page and adding pages later works well, if the sections are planned so they can become pages.
What one page does well, and where it runs out
On a single page you tell one story from top to bottom, ending with one action such as a call or a booking. Visitors never have to choose where to go next. That suits phones, where most people scroll rather than open menus. It's quick to build, too, and easy to keep current, since there's only one place to change.
It runs out in three places. Search engines can match one page to only a few closely related searches, so a page about everything ranks for nothing in particular. Explaining five services makes a page long; whoever came for the fourth scrolls past the first three. And anything that grows has no natural home. Articles, a changing menu, a list of projects all end up crammed somewhere.
What separate pages give you
Each page can answer one search. Picture a tiling company with one page for bathrooms and another for kitchens. It can appear for both searches, each time with the page that fits. Places work the same way. Give each town you work in its own page with real details about it, and you'll often get more local enquiries than from one page listing them all.
Measuring gets easier as well. If the bathroom page brings calls and the kitchen page stays quiet, you know which to improve. On a single page every visit looks alike.
The price is content. Every page needs its own text and photos, written for that service, and that's usually what takes longest. Five pages, three of them thin, help less than one good page.
The three questions that decide it
Answer them in order and stop at the first yes.
- Several services, each with its own customers? A wedding photographer who also shoots company portraits has two audiences who never look at each other's pages. They need a page each.
- Do people search for a specific service or place before they find you? If customers type "boiler repair" and a town into a search engine, a page for that service and that town is what they land on.
- Will you publish things that change often? Articles, a weekly menu, events or new projects need pages that can be added without rearranging the home page.
New businesses often answer no three times. So do many one-person practices, and craftspeople with a waiting list. For them one page is enough, and it's finished quickly.
How each one is laid out
A good one-page site follows the order in which a visitor's questions arrive. What is this? Is it for me? Can I trust it? What does it cost? Who are you, and how do I get in touch? Put the main button at the top and again at the end, so nobody has to scroll back up to act.
On a multi-page site, keep the menu short. Past five or six items people stop reading it, which is why single services usually sit one level down, under a services page that links to each.
Starting with one page and growing
You don't have to decide for the next ten years. A one-page site can grow into several pages without starting over, if two things are planned from the start:
- Sections that can become pages. Write each service section so it could stand on its own, with its own heading and a few sentences that answer the obvious questions. When you add a page later, that section becomes its opening.
- The same address for the home page. The home page stays at your domain, and new pages go below it (yourdomain.com/bathroom-tiling). Nothing that already ranks has to move.
If you are planning the site now, what a web designer needs from you covers the brief that settles most of these questions in one page.
When you know which kind fits, we design and build it around your brand, one page or several, with the structure ready for the pages you'll add later.
Before you decide
- You know how many different services you sell and who buys each one
- You know whether customers search for a service or a place before they find you
- You know whether anything on the site will change every week or month
- There is text and a photo for every page you plan, or a plan to get them
- If you start with one page, each service section can stand on its own