When parallax scrolling was cool and different, I designed an architecture site for a local architect using the effect.
It was very similar to this site where you had jarring transitions, background changes and images moving at different speeds.
https://doubble.group/sg/
The end result was very similar to site above and we all got a lot of positive feedback when their current clients saw it because they were blown away. While I was busy separating my shoulder patting myself on the back - we realized a few months in, the engagement was horrendous. The leads from their contact form dried up to almost nothing. Analytics showed an insane drop off from the home page. None of the internal pages were getting any traffic. We quickly realized that nobody could find any content on the site, they couldn't get to the contact page very easily, the content was hard to find and or read because of the motion and animation that constantly took your focus off of what you, as a user, were trying to do.
We had up for four months before having to pull it and put up their old site, then re-design another simple, more refined site that would work better for their users. It was a great lesson to learn about solving problems or trying to create something cool that nobody could use.
We also designed a site for a local event to support a women's shelter and used parallax again to tell a story of how women are shuffled through a system that does little to protect them from their ex-husbands or violent abusers.
It used the same techniques in this, where you had both horizontal and vertical scrolling in both directions to show a timeline and story with illustrations and infographics.
https://collagestudio.ca/en
This also got a ton of good feedback and we had a few other non-profits approach us to do something similar for them and we did a few more using the same template we had, but switching some elements to make it original for each client. This worked out much better because if people were able to digest the story and the points you were trying to make, it had a better impact than new clients trying to find specific content and the contact page.
They use their product landing pages as a commercial but you can see they make that top nav easy to get to buying it or tech specs.
Personally, I dislike scrolljacking but the other animated elements that come up in the viewport are pretty well-done. It's all ultra-sanitized and corporate but there's a lot of effort and finesse put into it.
The iPhone 15 Pro page is a good example, as soon as you click “Buy” or any other link on the top nav, the pages become much more conventional while still retaining a consistent and functional style. The dynamic scroll hacking stuff is only on the main marketing pages.
> On that note, why is Apple still successful with this? Everything is moving on their website.
Everything apart from the navigation bar at the top - which is well organised and static ( over-time ).
ie in terms of the functional 'find-stuff' part of the site - it's all there in the top few pixels(1), and the sub menus. The rest is entertainment.
(1) There is also a footer at the bottom of the scroll - with a whole host of simple links - if you get that far and haven't found what you are looking for.
> On that note, why is Apple still successful with this? Everything is moving on their website.
Think of it more like a scroll controlled trailer and that the metric they might be working on it the longer a customer spends on the site the more likely they are to convert.
Reason I think it's this is their sites are mega long and information packed with everything moving these days.
