One page websites - do and don't

Question

I'm about to develop one-page website. But suddenly I'm not sure this is the right solution.

The content characteristics are:

• Contains 8 sections.
• The sections depend on each other: section 2, for ex., is the background for understanding the content in section 3. So as I see it, there is a great advantage to represent the content in continuous flow as it might be in one page website.
• The content includes varied data and requires different data representation:
  • section 1 - contains 3 sentence explanation about our product + big illustration to demonstrate the basic concept of it,
  • section 2 - describes the background for using the product (what are the problems that requires the product intervention) - texts blocks + demonstrative images,
  • section 3 - describes the solutions our product offers to those problems (why it's important to use the product),
  • section 4 - describes the way it works (animation), section 5 - reviews the pilot achievements (about 3 paragraphs of text + 500 pixels infographic),
  • section 6 - add comment feature,
  • section 7 - about page,
  • section 8 - contact.

Each section should take place of one screen dimensions, except section 5 (pilot review), which may be little longer (about 2 screens - something like 1500 pixels height).

On one hand, there is a great advantage to represent the content in continuous flow as in one page website. On the other, I'm afraid my content is too long.

What would you do?

Any tips or guidelines for designing one page website?

Answer 1

I personally love one pagers given that there is more visual than textual.

Researches suggest that it is a tendency for the users to scroll to see how much content the page has and if you have a lot of text in the page then they might skip it.

My advice will be to make it more interactive by using progressive animations and good visuals if you can. Also, do give a navigation menu on top using which the user can go to each section. Also, make the whole design a flow with something in common in two consecutive section so that the user don't loose the flow but segregate the sections by some means as well. So it is a touch job for the designer but given some animations and visuals the site can be a big hit.