Flash websites can be very powerful when delivering a visual. Unfortunately, the effects of Flash stop there. From a graphic web design standpoint, Flash is attractive, fun and animated, but is it helping your website? Most likely not.
There are been a number of outstanding problems with Flash, including it’s compatibility with search engines. The internet overall is about text, and Flash doesn’t handle text very well. For whatever text may be included in your Flash (SEO keyword rich or not), most search engines won’t be able to index it anyway. Without an indexed website, your pages will never be found. Web designers can’t stress enough, the importance of content and copy on your website. Flash based websites usually wipeout the option of creating a content-rich website.
Aside from being buried among the millions and millions of other websites, once your page is found it’s not uncommon for it to take an extra few seconds to load. These seconds are worth a lot in the internet search world. Flash development usually takes much longer to load than HTML websites. Users (and potential customers) don’t like to wait. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more risk you take in losing customers.
Typical web design features aren’t included in Flash, making your website less user-friendly. Since Flash is typically all about the presentation, web usability goes out the window. Your typical navigation, contact information and other important pages aren’t in the standard position, making your user look longer for what they’re searching for. Another few worthy seconds you’re losing.
There are other development issues with Flash and some people just don’t like Flash pages. From a web designer’s perspective, there are other ways to attract your users that will get you ranked in search engines. Using HTML and displaying your WebPages with web usability standards will be more effective overall for your business and website.
