Here’s some advice
regarding your use of Flash. Despite the documented problems
over the years, businesses and web development firms are
continuing to use a flash base for site design, without regard
of the challenges an all flash site poses for search engine
rankings and SEO (not to mention usability). A business web
site shouldn’t be built completely as a .swf Flash file. Why?
Here’s a few reasons:
Where and How Not to Use Flash.
Building Flash-powered websites is wrong. Storing your content
in Flash movies is wrong. Implementing site navigation in
Flash is wrong.
Then why are there so many Flash sites? They look pretty with
all those neat vector graphics, gradients, animations and cool
sound effects. Flash is the favorite toy of big designer
studios and numerous amateur graphic artists alike. Flash is
visually attractive, and in general attractive websites are
more successful than the ugly ones (notable exceptions:
craigslist.org and plentyoffish.com). But this is not the case
of Flash websites. All the benefits of the nice outlook are
overridden by the disadvantages in terms of SEO and usability.
Problems linking or bookmarking Flash pages
With a 100% Flash web site it’s hard to bookmark a specific
“page” of your Flash file for the user. Users don’t want to
bookmark your “Main” page and have to navigate to the content
they want every time they need to get there.
Flash Splash/Intro pages. They’re dumb. But some individuals
like them and use them. As for using Flash in your Intro Page,
go ahead, just make sure you have a “Skip Intro” button,
because 90% of all site visitors will use that button and
resent waiting.
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Flash requires
bandwidth
Despite of the DSL Internet access being available almost
everywhere, there are still lots of people surfing the Net via
dialup or other limited bandwidth connection. Flash files,
especially those using sound effects, embedded movies or
bitmap images, can take a while to load.
Disabled back button
Some Flash designers use meta refreshes or other tricks to
disable browser’s Back button. As the famous usability expert
Jacob Nielsen says, ‘Back button is the second most important
navigation element after hyperlinks’.
People not able to use Back button will click the third most
important navigation element - that X button in the top right.
Besides, if you are going to promote a Flash site via PPC, you
should know that Google AdWords doesn’t approve pages with
disabled back button.
Flash ignores users needs
Whereas the ground rules of marketing emphasize the
concentration on the users’ needs, Flash websites ignore them.
Take the infamous site intros and splash screens that are as
much annoying as the 45 minutes of advertising and previews in
cinemas. Or another example: the sound effects - they are can
be especially inappropriate and harmful when you are browsing
the Net from a cubicle in a quiet office or from home in the
late hours.
Search engines do not like Flash
And perhaps the most important: not every search engine is
able to crawl and index the content of Flash movies. Even
those that can often do it with errors. This is in particular
the case of a website fully implemented in Flash as a single
file. Search engines just wouldn’t be able to direct visitors
to the proper page within that file. Its not very analytical
friendly for that matter either. Sure, Google Analytics
recently added Flash tracking, but it’s not perfected.
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