Flash – Bang – You’re Dead!

Flash pages; those fancy pages full of moving graphics or text, that flies in and out of the page can be hazardous to your web health and wealth.

Why?

First off, a Flash page increases the file size that has to be loaded for a visitor to view the page and continue into your site. How many times have you clicked off of a site instead of watching the little icon spin round and round? You must keep in mind that a visitor to your site may not be using a super fast internet connection. There are still people who cannot get high speed access to the web.

Second, many Flash pages load with music and sound effects that may not make every viewer happy. I have been surfing the web late at night only to stumble across a site that blared a loud tune as soon as the page loaded. I just about jumped out of the chair. Even if you supply a button to turn off the sound, there is no standard place for it to be located on a page. Visitors are left to search for it. A better solution is to provide an option to turn the sounds on, if a visitor so desires.

And now for THE Biggest Reason: The text and messages in a Flash document are not able to be read by the search engines, they are images. If you worked hard to create an interesting message in regular text and put it in the Flash movie; it still will not be able to be read by Google and other search engines. So the page will not rank very high in the search results based on the text on the page that is in Flash.

So is Flash good for anything? A site that is interested in showing off art or images can use Flash to its advantage. The best examples are sites for photographers, where the images speak for themselves. Often the goal of an artist site is to get the viewer so involved with the visuals that text or copy is not need. My personal opinion is even in that case, a site without Flash would bring more business to the owner.

Technology is constantly moving forward. There are new ways to make Flash sites more readable to the search engines and that should continue in the future. Only you can decide if the advantages Flash offers outweigh the disadvantages for you site.

You can call us Toll Free to discuss this and any other needs you may have for your website. 800-598-4008.