Full discrepancy: I am NOT a web designer, I am a developer.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have a perspective, and this piece is all about personal perspective and opinion (if that wasn’t obvious by now).

Recently, I’ve noticed a ton (literal amount I believe to be exact) of sites switching to a single, scrolling, marketing homepage. You can easily identify these sites by the following characteristics:

1. A large banner or slideshow that covers almost (or all of) the entire top of the page.
2. A long set of sections below that you must scroll down to see, usually accompanied by large photography and equally large fonts.
3. An set of “cool” animations as you scroll in some cases.
4. A lack of actual content. Most content is limited to single sentences or even single words. It’s a TL;DR world (excluding TL scrolling).

This issue really got to me when I saw the new PayPal homepage a few weeks back. This was the best example in my mind of how silly those large “video” banners really can be.

The content there literally means nothing.

The entire “above the fold” content tells you nothing about what PayPal does, how it works, or anything of value. Apparently this is all the rage because it “wows” the user to the extent of: “Ooh, shiny”.

Along with PayPal is a sleuth of other sites doing the same or similar types of sites. Plenty of services that look “cool” by doing this design technique turn out to be complete duds. Most times I find (on hidden sub-pages with actual content) that while their design looks cool, their product is sub-par at best.

This is not saying that this type of design can’t work.

It definitely can, if used properly. If you have a good product, relevant and informative content, and can get that on the page by all means go for it.

This design does actually wow the user and look great in some cases, but it can easily be overused and sometimes overshadow the actual product.

The web needs to be more than giant neon posters.

Most people go to a website with a purpose, and most times it is not to be “wowed”. It’s to get something done or become better informed.

Quality content and a quality product are the keys to getting that something done or learned. If you don’t have those, using your website to make up for that is probably not the best use of time.

So just remember:

Next time you or your team might be thinking about a “parallax” or “single scrolling page” site design, just make sure it’s really worth it.

And a quick note about PayPal: I used PayPal as an example because they DO have a successful product and quality content. In fact I believe this page should be their homepage as it explains all that AND looks great: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/peoplerule

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