Parallax design is a style of web design in which the background of the website moves at a different speed from the rest of the page, creating the illusion of depth, for an impressive visual effect. You might recognize it from some old school video games that used parallax design to create a 2D effect.
One of the main benefits of using parallax design for a website is that it allows the site to essentially walk a visitor through a story, just by scrolling down the page. The ability to tell a story on these sites encourages visitors to scroll through the entire site by sparking their curiosity, often resulting in longer page visits (that’s the “Time on Site” metric in Google Analytics).
Although many of these sites are visually outstanding, most parallax websites are considered very unfavorable for search engine optimization (SEO). They often have longer load times, especially if they have numerous images. Because many parallax sites are single-page, there is only the opportunity to specify one Page Title, Meta Description, URL, etc. It’s also difficult to use various keywords on one page of a site. Another con to single page sites is that it prohibits internal page linking within the website.