Flash Should Have No Home

Information Please

Visitors come to your website for information. If they can't find it they will go elsewhere. Likewise if it takes them too long to get to that information, they will go elsewhere. A splashy Flash-only page can be a powerful tool, but a well designed home page can be just as powerful without the wait.

Flash works best with the latest versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer and a high-speed Internet connection. Many regional areas are still only getting access to high-speed Internet and not everyone wants to pay $50-60 or more a month for a faster connection when they can still get dial-up for less than half.

No One Likes to Wait

You might be thinking that you don't care about the people who are not up-to-date or have high speed connections. You might even scoff at the dial-up users as just being in a lower income than your target customers. You would be wrong on both counts.

Don't Get Too Far Ahead of Your Customers

Before you decide to ignore the dial up customers or ones who have not upgraded, consider your customers and their level of technological sophistication.

Visit any public area on the Internet and it shouldn't take too long before you see someone mention having to wait for one of their children, nieces, nephews, neighbor, or hired professional to come and fix, install, or otherwise set up their computers. Many of this group purchased a machine and have never changed anything since the day they first turned it on. I personally know many people in this group. They use the Internet several times a day and have done research for their last major purchase on the Internet. Ask them how to cut and paste, create a spreadsheet or mention the word database and you will get a strange look and be asked "What's that?"

These people are at all levels of the socio-economic spectrum, so they could very easily be among your target customers.

Flash images will most likely not work on their computers. Even if they do work, how long do you think they are willing to wait for it to load? The average web surfer waits no longer than a few seconds for a site to load before leaving. Are you confident your Flash image will load that fast?

Is having a Flash introduction worth the risk of losing a potential customer?

Everyone is using technology to improve communications and to become more accessible to new customers. Why then, would you want something on your site that could interfere with that communication? Are you selling your web programmer or graphics person's talents, or your services?

Give Them Options

If you still want to use a splashy Flash introduction, always have an option for the visitor to skip the Flash.

An example... Visit any of the various Real Estate trade magazines and professional organizations on the web who regularly list the agents who have outstanding web sites. There will be very little Flash and splash among the sites chosen. Those agents have already figured it out, they sell Real Estate - not fancy smancy, superfluous techno-trickery.

Flash Can Be Powerful

Does Flash have any place on a web site? Yes; used carefully it can be a very powerful tool.

After all that I just said it sounds like I am contradicting myself. Not really, my main point was not to use Flash introductions on your home page.

Take that same Flash sequence of pictures of your community and offer it as an animated, guided tour of your city and suddenly you return to offering a service. Show off your product in action with a Flash animation and you can demonstrate how your widget is better than everyone else's.

Someone who clicks on a link knowing a Flash animation will be loaded will be more likely to wait for it to load, even if they are still only using dial-up. The key here is that the visitor can choose whether or not they want to see it.

Flash Only On The Inside

The best rule of thumb to use with Flash is to make it optional and use it like you would use a piece of film.

There's that old saying that you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover. We all know we do. You are going to have only one chance to make a first impression. Web visitors want to meet you, see what you are selling and find out what information can be found on your site.

I have never met anyone for the first time who refused to speak to me; instead asking me to wait while they load a projector, set up the viewing screen, turn down the lights and show me a video about themselves. So why should you introduce your website that way?

Flash & Search Engines

It's true that a picture is often worth a thousand words; but that only works when the viewer is a person. Websites are ranked by search engines based on a number of factors, the biggest of which is the content displayed on the page. Search engines visit websites and look at all of the text. What the search engines can't do is to determine that a picture called logo.jpg has the name of your company.

A splashy page that only contains Flash elements is virtually indecipherable to search engines. What that means is that the search engine sees that page as having no content. When that happens, the search engine is unlikely to rank that page well, if at all.

Consider how many of your potential customers may be coming from search engines and ask yourself if that splash page is worth it if it is not listed in the search engine results. Why give up even one entry for your website in the search engines?

Another Perspective

After reading this article, a webmaster from the Netherlands invited me to visit a toy company website that he maintains. Every page of this website uses Flash, and uses it very effectively. He told me that in the Netherlands if a website is marketing a product or service to children, it must have Flash, otherwise it will fail as a marketing piece.

I have to agree; if he were to remove the Flash elements this website would not be as effective. It does, however, contain a great deal of textual content that can be evaluated by the search engines. And, if the Flash elements were removed completely, there is plenty of written content to convey the website's message. So, while his site does make extensive use of Flash, the Flash is not used in place of the content, but to complement it.

There's no argument that when used well, Flash can be a powerful attention getter. My conversation with this webmaster came to the conclusion that all webmasters need to know and understand their audience.

Ultimately, each website owner decides how information is presented on their website. My primary point in this article is that Flash should only be used after search engine ranking and usability are carefully considered.

A note about the author:
Articles appearing on www.yourmessageconsultant.com were written by Michele Tway. Michele has almost 20 years of experience as both an IT and writing professional. She has worked with publicly traded, private and government organizations, and now offers her services as Your Message Consultant. While this article is not available for reprints, she is available to write similar content for your website, newsletter, blog, or print publication.