If you are following what’s in and out in the website design space, chances are you’ve already seen what web designers are getting gaga about these days. Move over Flash and Ajax, the newest darling is parallax website design.

In recent years, parallax scrolling has gained avid champions among brand websites due to the visual effect and enhanced functionality it provides their portfolio pages, product presentations, and dynamic brand storytelling.

While some experts are kind, some are vocal about their opinions against the use of parallax scrolling for web pages. After you’ve read this blog, sure enough, you already have an inkling about whether or not it is feasible to use parallax scrolling on your website when pondering about its merits and demerits.

First, What Parallax Website Design Is

Historically, the parallax method is nothing new. Before 1980s, parallax was the technique of choice used in creating the illusion of depth within 2D video games. Not until the rise of arcade games in 1980s that this technique’s popularity exploded. Zoom in today, parallax is used for web pages.

Simply, parallax web design is a technique that gives an illusion of a moving webpage with creative screens. Here’s an illustration how parallax gives that impressive visual journey of sort: when you scroll within a website design page, you will see the background image (the page background) slowly moving than the foreground images (where page image content are placed).

Vary the speed of your scrolling and the speed of the movement will also change. Just the same, there is a visceral and breathtaking experience that this gives the user.

Often this type of web scrolling is effective in scenarios that involve visual galleries or linear storytelling. One good example is the Spotify home page, which displays layers upon layers of graphics that reveal themselves once visitors scroll down the page.

How Parallax Web Design Works

This parallax scrolling technique is done by compiling layers in order to allow multiple backgrounds and images to move at different perspectives and varying speeds. Depth and perspective are created as a result of the faux 3D effect achieved. To allow the images of the background and foreground to move along seamlessly, the layers has to fit together piece by piece.

So, it may be the latest darling among web experts. But not so many people are learned how it works and what parallax website design can bring to their businesses. How good is it for your online marketing promotions? And by the way, how about SEO? See, there are issues yet left unanswered.

To help you in your investigation, we’ll provide some of the advantages and disadvantages of using parallax web scrolling compiled from experts’ opinion. Mind that these are important lessons to learn before jumping on the parallax web design bandwagon.

Potentials of Parallax Website

1. For branded content, parallax design scrolling brings web pages that are both dynamic and interactive for users, hence a bait for sharing and pinning on social media channels by users.
2. There is no longer a need for users to navigate through your site’s different pages or wait for each page to load because your content is already placed on one page.
3. Gone are the days when designers have to rely on graphics and colors to entice users navigate around the website. Parallax website design changes all that and users can be led around the different direction of the site the designer wants.

Pitfalls of Parallax Website

1. With its graphics- and high resolution image-heavy set, parallax designs can take far longer to load; though usability-wise, however, it may also not function smoothly across all major browsers.
2. The misuse of parallax website design can pose difficulty for users to navigate a site. Using this scrolling technique for content-heavy sites is discouraged because of the amount of scrolling it will entail users to perform, thus making reading difficult for readers.
3. Since this is still regarded as a trend, parallax scrolling for websites may still not be mobile-ready at this moment. However with the right designer, some adjustments can be made to make your website look exactly the same on a mobile device as it does on your desktop computer.

For SEO, How Does Parallax Design Work?

The challenges that parallax scrolling for websites present for SEO are actually too important to be left unaddressed. When all of a website’s content are housed under one or single page, optimizing for keywords becomes difficult. As a result, it’s like all your eggs (targeted keywords) are placed under one next (one-page website), which is contrary to how optimization must be carried out. Thus, keyword dilution occur since targeted keywords are not spread over many pages. Even inbound links are affected since there is just your one-page website versus specific page content to create a more effective search engine optimization of your website.

In the words of most experts blogging about parallax website design and SEO, it is difficult to arrive at an accurate measurement of engagement. Some claims pointed out that there has never been an A/B tests that supported claims engagement metrics are even possible with parallax scrolling for websites.

Some Workarounds

Some quarters argue that parallax website design should be avoided at all cost when your priority is organic search visibility. It’s also claimed the absence of Google’s webmaster guideline constraints any creative workarounds. Thus the declaration parallax website scrolling and SEO seems incompatible. But that’s the case until Posicionamiento Web ruled that out.

Carla Dawson of the Argentina-based digital marketing agency has experimented with their website to prove that a full site SEO on a parallax website design is possible. We share below her three general guidelines to implement online optimization for parallax scrolling design:

• Site architecture for SEO is a must.
• Start applying parallax scrolling – which is a style of effects that can be applied to each URL – with SEO-friendly web architecture.
• Make sure content is one of the layers so it becomes visible to the browser and to the user. Content may also be hidden from users to create an interactive effect where they must click to see more details. This effect is not ghosting or a practice to trick the search engines.

Wrapping Up

Parallax scrolling design may have its advocates and critics as a web design strategy that mixes depth and motion to achieve a visually-enticing experience for users. The battle between pundits about the ups and downs of parallax website scrolling frequently zero in the conflict between design and SEO.

Depending on your goals financially or conversion, it remains an important point to ponder about search engine visibility. In Dawson’s proof of concept, she determines that it’s not impossible to create full-SEO site on a parallax website design. The combination of parallax scrolling and HTML is also another technique to explore.

How about you, what’s your take in this issue? Have you used SEO into your parallax website design? Let us know how you did it.