One page websites, simple, clean; like an interactive business card. The idea itself is great, essentially you throw up one really simple page which directs users to a portfolio, various social media, blog, the list go’s on. Forcing the page to be quite simple is key. cutting content, thinking about goals, and trimming the graphics, for example lets examine the ‘Zach Klein’ site (http://www.zachklein.com/).

Introduction is direct, and more importantly:

• notice how the LINKS are simple links with the keyword highlighted.
• There is no “click here” garbage pretending to be ‘hyperlinks’.
• There is no useless animation or overuse of high res graphics, this site loads within 3 seconds…
• There are only 3 things you can do on this simple page
  
  • view links to other sites
  • get a feed
  • contact

Its done quite well, and this same concept seems to be taking off for individuals and personal use, and less for the corporate company. CEO’s, freelancers and artists tend to gravitate toward this type of page. It can also be a great ‘starter’ for those making the first venture on to the web.

Many web sites are increasingly ‘overdone’, confusing, or useless because of too many agendas. The ‘one page’ site has its obvious benefits, but you can often take it a step further. The prime page real-estate for the site above is used wisely, but since the sites goal is to act as more of a ‘portal’ rather than a ‘hub’ it is free to use up all available space in a unique way. Another consideration is the ‘scrolling’ one page. N0t quite as simple, it can still be cool, here is a demo example (http://www.stemcellforcures.org/final/).

• An extended page with ‘jump to top’ and a menu which moves the page down.
• Notice the “back to top buttons”
• Notice the multiple H1, H2, and H3 opportunity
• No flash, simple JS tricks.
• Still a simple ‘one page’ site…

There are some benefits to the scrolling page, you have the opportunity to combine multiple keyword goals for multiple landing pages into one. There are also some problems with larger SEO campaigns, but if your goals are more informational they of course offset the interaction based expectations of your users. Which brings up the opportunity to reinforce this concept:

” If you try to build a website which does everything, it blogs, feeds, provides information, text rich content, video, social interactions, e-commerce, accepts payments, animates, and play music too, you may just end up with a website that does all of those things, but does none of them very well, its better to have several websites with specific goals.”

The joy of these websites is their simplicity, their bane can be SEO. With enough effort you could technically launch a huge inbound link strategy and get some temporary page one rankings, but in most cases the content would rarely change. To offset this one could always pull in a feed, or even change the page daily, however that’s not the point of the ‘digital business card’. If your goals include page one Google ranks, the ‘one page website’ may not be for you…

In the end, having a simple “this is me” or “this is my company / event / product” one page website can have its benefits. A popular consideration for anyone would be to register your name at the very least and put up your one page digital business card… (In fact, I think I am about to do that asap).