Are parallax websites a thing?

S

Spacerat

Expert Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2015
Messages
1,527
Reaction score
660
I need a new company website and someone proposed a parallax type site. However I find it rather gimmicky and not necessarily easy to get the message across...

Anyone have any opinions?
 
I know they were all the rage a couple years ago, haven't seen a decent looking one in a while. I also suppose it depends on your business and the product / service your offering.
 
Only Apple can pull that off :p

In seriousness, I wouldn't think of it as a good idea for a business 'contact' type page.
 
Depends on industry, never let a marketer/seo guy dictate design. Why is scrolly sh_t lit? Cause marketers/designers think it increases user engagement. A/B testing states otherwise, same as a slider. So unless it's a lookbook or something that has lots of hd images, don't bother. Rather identify and design for your target market. Your site has 1 goal only, to get as many people to buy into your idea or service as possible. Everything else is superfluous.
 
John_Phoenix said:
Depends on industry, never let a marketer/seo guy dictate design. Why is scrolly sh_t lit? Cause marketers/designers think it increases user engagement. A/B testing states otherwise, same as a slider. So unless it's a lookbook or something that has lots of hd images, don't bother. Rather identify and design for your target market. Your site has 1 goal only, to get as many people to buy into your idea or service as possible. Everything else is superfluous.
Click to expand...

Hmm yes exactly what I thought.
 
Parallax is an effect. It's not a type of website. It's when the background moves at a different speed to the content.
Perhaps it's a one-pager website that makes use of the parallax effect.
In that case, it depends entirely on the purpose of the website. What is the website for?
In general though, for the average business website, I'm not a fan of one-pagers, whether they use parallax or not.
Separate/more pages is beneficial for many reasons.
 
Type of site? If it can support the content, then sure, have it scrollable. Do make sure that someone can select the menu (fixed at the top) and it scrolls to the content (in ~0.5 sec, make it as though fast scroll, there are plugins for that).

All depends on the content/target market.
 
Basically a typical site to summarise our (dev) services and (software & hardware) products. The company pitching is like parallax this, parallax that etc. Focus seems wrong
 
For a professional site the flat retro look is king. Adding artsy stuff like parallax scrolling and irrelevant features throws me off from a company.
 
Spacerat said:
Basically a typical site to summarise our (dev) services and (software & hardware) products. The company pitching is like parallax this, parallax that etc. Focus seems wrong
Click to expand...

You're on the money. Find a new company.
I'd hazard a wild guess that they're going to use one of the 10000 Wordpress themes out there that make use of the parallax effect, and are selling it to you as some fancy new web standard/technology, which it isn't. It's the kind of thing a really decent design studio wouldn't even really mention as part of their proposal, it's so unimportant.
 
Don't pay "skoolgeld" to these guys, as a software/hardware house you want to exhibit what you can do for the client, how you can make their lives easier/better. The first question they should ask, is, what is your target demographic (in your opinion), secondly, who are your main competitors, and thirdly, what is your budget/time constraints. As much as we like to think that, 1) everyone, 2) no-one and 3) unlimited are valid answers, they are not.

The company you choose to work with, should try to understand the above 3 answers at a granular level, and provide you with a good mix of solutions based on these answers.

If you don't mind, when all is said and done, please post your experience here, so that we can learn from your journey.
 
The reality is that we are a small team of devs. We do great work. We have 2 niche flagship products that are almost unique in the world. We actually need a marketing person that can fulfill the need of a typical marketing dept. A company punting a parallax website seems to be missing the point. We want to focus on digital marketing of our company and products, i.e. LinkedIn Leads, website, product websites etc
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X