Advice On The Many Perils Of Flash

How Flash Animation Can Ruin Your Website

Macromedia Flash MX technology is quickly evolving as the de facto Internet multimedia standard. Experienced Flash designers and ActionScript programmers can create almost magical database driven functionality and artistic graphic effects. Creative designers love Flash as a design tool that brings out the best of their artistic abilities.

Our creative designers are expert with the technology and we love to showcase our artistic abilities. Nevertheless, our advice is to be very cautious using Flash in your company website. Flash can unleash a series of problems that effectively defeats the core value of the site.

We more fully discuss these problems in the text below, but to quickly summarize our conclusion we feel a good compromise strategy may be to use Flash in a limited way to enhance the look of a page rather than the content. This compromise will give you a graphically superior site, and will avoid the problems discussed below. This compromise takes expert implementation, so amateurs you’re now forewarned.

Call us today. We will help you better understand website design problems, and turn your site into a revenue and profit generating engine. It’s Your Move!

Effective Marketing Strategies Sell Products And Services, Not Animation

Generally speaking "All Flash" websites are best used to appeal to a very young audience and on gaming sites, where selling products and services is not the core reason for the site. Company sites typically are just the opposite. Most likely your future depends on the sale of great products and services. Your site must be rich with information that convinces the prospect that they have discovered the finest product or expertise available to solve their wants and needs. Useless, overly flashy animated graphics will just get in the way of conveying the unique values your company offers.

Is Your Website Sending Valuable Customers To Your More Savvy Competitors?

The argument against the over use of Flash in your website goes beyond the validity of emphasizing your message over animated graphics. Even more problematic is low speed Internet connections that download Flash files notoriously slow. Many of our customers could not sleep at night if they thought they were losing valuable customers, because the prospect clicked away to a competitor, who is using a better optimized website. Customers don’t want eye candy. Rather, they want to be quickly assured that your company has the exact products and expertise they need to solve their problems.

Flash And Search Engine Optimization Go Together Like Fire And Water

Most search engine spiders are not programmed to effectively read and index Flash components. This may be the most compelling reason to be very cautious when using Flash in your company website. Non-Flash sites consistently enjoy higher search engine rankings.

Never underestimate the value of search engines as a source of visitors to your web site. Most visitors find your site using search engine queries. Why have a website if no one can find you? Use this SEO link to learn more about our search engine optimization strategies.

Why Not Create A Flash Site And A Non-Flash HTML Site And Let The User Choose

What’s the point? Two sites inflict a lot of extra expense in development and maintenance. There is some merit in two sites if you are a creative design firm that wants to show off its Flash skills. Otherwise, you’re better off with one site, and it should be created by experts who know how to get the best results from Flash technology while minimizing the problems discussed.

Our creative team is here to help you with the best design strategy for your website. We’re brilliant at this. Call us today, to further discuss. It’s Your Move!