Flash has made a big impact on the web and is a great tool with many applications but creating a website with Flash can create a barrier to people accessing your website.
What is Flash?
Flash is a type of animation software, originally designed to create animations for display on web pages. A good example of Flash appears on Adobe’s UK homepage www.adobe.com/uk/ (the makers the Flash software). But Flash is also used for putting video onto websites, creating navigation systems and dynamic content – so it’s a powerful application.
The first problem with Flash is the time it can take to load. Depending on your connection speed this can be anything from a few seconds to minutes. But as most surveys indicate that the average person spends less than 2 seconds deciding whether a page is worth looking at, a page that takes 30 seconds to load is regularly going to be dumped before it’s seen. And some visitors to your Flash site will have to download a plug-in before they start, or they won’t see anything.
But the problem as far as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is concerned is that search engines don’t see Flash as we see it. In fact for a search engine, a Flash page is often just a blank with little or no content to index. Search engines love content, it tells them what the site is about and how it should be categorised and ranked. So a Flash page can create major problems in gaining a decent ranking in Google, Yahoo, etc.
Having said all that Flash is an excellent piece of software which, if used with thought can make a website something special. Navigation rollovers using images and text can really lift a website. Flash banners that load quickly can even liven up the pages of an estate agent – www.seafieldsproperty.co.uk. It can enhance static images and create movement as on www.solentribcharter.co.uk. It can be an excellent way of demonstrating a product – www.vision-environmental.co.uk
So before you go down the Flash route with your web designer ask a few questions like, ‘Is it essential to the site?’, ‘What does it provide?’, ‘Can we do without it?’ and the most important question, ‘Will it benefit the end user in any way?’
