Why Just Say No To Flash?
Flash is a great tool to consider as part of a website’s infrastructure. On the other hand, Flash is a poor platform on which to build a complete web site. Flash technology is well, flashy. Typically Flash websites offer pretty eye and ear candy to the site user. Flash is sophisticated enough to offer interactive opportunities which are important if you want your site to be “sticky”. “Sticky” is a term used to describe conditions in a website much like flypaper. Once you land, the content in the site causes you to stick around. As great as a good looking and sounding site is, one thing to remember is that “Content Is Always King.”
Take a look at a completely boring website that is “sticky”. Craigslist, is about as plain a site as there is, but it is hugely successful because it addresses what visitors need. Easy access via navigation to the information, in this case, advertisement, that a visitor wants. No eye or ear candy, no annoying lengthy load in times and Craigslist is browser as well as bandwidth friendly. Unlike bandwidth consuming Flash websites, Craigslist is a very lightweight online application. I don’t care if you have a 2400 Baud modem, you can browse Craigslist!
Bandwidth issues opens another can of Flash worms. Not everyone in the world is on a cable connection. If anything, due to mobile browsing, connection speeds for the average Internet user haven’t really increased since the average Internet user is increasingly browsing via a mobile device. In fact there are whole swaths of the United States that are still dependent on dial-up modems to access the Internet. If your existing or prospective clients are either rural or mobile, (and I’d argue that the second category is where the future is), you want to run screaming from Flash.
Finally, many Flash developers create Flash websites that are a gross disservice to their clients. While the site may meet initial visual expectations, in many cases, Flash websites are nearly impossible to update. If you stick with the same developer, this may not be the case, but I have walked away from several Flash web redesigns due to the fact that I did not have the original “raw” Flash files to work with. What you see online in a typical Flash website IS NOT EDITABLE CONTENT!
Below I have listed more important reasons not to spend a dime on a Flash based website.
1. Flash is Search Engine Optimization Unfriendly
- Search engines rank sites by “crawling” pages for relevant keywords and phrases. Flash obscures this content from search engines.
2. Flash is currently not supported by IPads and Iphones.
- Having a Flash based website means you will make your content unavailable to the most popular mobile browsing devices today! 150 million mobile Internet users will not be able to see your site!
3. Flash Intro Screens Are Slow and Annoying
- Sure, the first time you anticipate a loading Flash website it might be sexy-cool. That is if you have the time to wait. Repeat visitors find Flash sites highly annoying time wasters!
4. Flash Is Expensive To Upkeep
- Flash is budget unfriendly. Unfortunately some web developers code Flash sites so they cannot be updated at all. In most other cases, creating and adding up-to-date content is expensive and dependent on the original web designer. In all cases, Flash-based websites are labor intensive and take a developer to update even the simplest content.
5. Flash Websites Are Not Scalable.
- If you are on your second or third website, this should strike a loud bell by your ear. As with many static websites, Flash just isn’t scalable. That is, you cannot with relative ease, expand the functionality of a Flash based website. In most cases you might as well start over.
WordPress doesn’t suffer from any of these negative characteristics!
Social Me Up!