Has Your Business Outgrown Its Single-Page Website?
I remember the first time I saw a single-page scrolling website.
It was for St. George Spirits, a distillery in Alameda, California, and I was completely captivated by it.
I remember thinking, what a great idea. It felt fun, visual, and completely different from the traditional websites I was used to seeing. As a designer, I loved the possibilities. A long scrolling page gave you so much room to play with graphics, pacing, transitions, typography, and storytelling.
When I first started developing websites, the platform I was working with didn’t offer single-page scrolling as a built-in feature. So I learned how to code them from scratch.
By hand.
I built a number of them for clients, and I even used the same approach for my own portfolio.
And I loved building them.
Then something happened that completely changed the way I thought about website structure.
An early hybrid site I designed
The Meeting That Changed My Approach
I was hired to build a website for a high-end wedding planner. During the project, she asked me to sit in on a meeting with a marketing consultant she had hired.
One of my biggest takeaways from that conversation was this:
A single-page scrolling website can cause a business to miss a tremendous amount of search traffic.
At the time, that surprised me.
Now, after roughly 12 years of developing websites, it makes perfect sense.
One of my favorite I did in the early days
The Problem Isn't the Scrolling
The issue isn't that Google dislikes long scrolling pages.
The issue is that search engines need to understand what each page of your website is about.
Imagine you own a business that offers:
Private events
Children's classes
Corporate workshops
Studio rentals
Retail products
Memberships
On a traditional single-page site, all of those services may appear as sections of one homepage.
To a person scrolling through the site, that can make perfect sense.
But from a search perspective, you're asking one webpage to rank for six very different things.
Someone searching Google for a children's class has a completely different intent than someone searching for corporate team building.
Someone searching for studio rental may not even know you offer children's programs.
When every service lives at the same URL, Google has to determine what that one page is primarily about and which searches it should appear for.
That's where opportunities can be lost.
Another early example
What Happens When Those Services Have Their Own Pages?
Now imagine that same business has dedicated pages for each major offering:
yourwebsite.com/private-events
yourwebsite.com/corporate-events
Each page can focus on one specific subject.
The page title, headings, written content, images, FAQs, and calls to action can all reinforce exactly what that page is about.
That gives search engines a much clearer signal.
It also means that when someone searches for something specific, you have a specific page that can potentially meet that search.
And that's where the website starts becoming more than an online brochure.
It becomes a marketing tool.
So Did I Stop Building Scrolling Websites?
Not at all.
I still love them.
I'm still enamored with the playful and unique design opportunities a long scrolling page provides. There is something really satisfying about creating a homepage that unfolds as someone moves through it.
So instead of abandoning the format, I changed the way I build it.
Most of the websites I build today use what I think of as a hybrid website structure.
The homepage still has that single-page scrolling experience.
You can move naturally through the story of the business:
Who they are → What they do → Their major services → Their work → Their story → A call to action
But when a service deserves more information—or has real search potential—it links to a dedicated page.
Why the Hybrid Website Is My Favorite
For me, it gives you the best of both worlds.
You still get:
A visually interesting scrolling homepage
A simple experience for people who just want an overview
Room for storytelling and creative design
But you also get:
Dedicated pages for important services
More opportunities to appear in search
Better landing pages for social media and advertising
Clearer calls to action
More room for your website to grow with your business
It also makes marketing much easier.
If I'm promoting one specific service on social media, I don't necessarily want to send someone to a general homepage and hope they scroll far enough to find it.
I want to send them directly to the thing they're already interested in.
Instagram post about a service → Service page → Inquiry
Google search → Relevant page → Booking
Email campaign → Specific offer → Purchase
The website is helping move someone forward instead of asking them to hunt for information.
Already Have a Single-Page Website?
You may not need to rebuild it.
This is probably the most important thing I want business owners to understand.
If your current website is a single-page scrolling site, that doesn't automatically mean you need to throw it away and start over.
You may simply have outgrown the original structure.
In many platforms—including WordPress—a site that was originally designed around a scrolling homepage can often still support dedicated subpages.
That means you may be able to keep the homepage you already like and gradually build a stronger structure underneath it.
Start by looking at your current homepage and asking:
Which sections represent actual services?
Which of those services might someone search for independently?
Which services need more explanation than you're currently giving them?
Which sections do you regularly promote on social media?
Where do you want people to land when they click those promotions?
Those are often the first pages worth building.
Your Website Should Grow With Your Business
A single-page site isn't inherently a bad website.
Sometimes it's exactly the right website for where a business is at the time.
But businesses change.
They add services. They develop new audiences. They start advertising. They invest more heavily in social media. Search becomes more important.
The website needs to grow along with them.
For me, the hybrid approach has become the sweet spot.
I still get to build the kind of playful, visually engaging scrolling websites that first made me fall in love with the format.
But I also get to make sure my clients are getting what they actually need from their website:
visibility, traffic, inquiries, and sales.
