Occasionally, a web site will use sound and motion
to such good effect that everyone who sees it has
to show it to a friend. If the link is getting forwarded
geometrically, that's great! If the main entrance
to the site is choking out many of the intended
target visitors, it can be very bad.
Those great effects, most often, were built with
Macromedia Flash Technology. Make no mistake, Flash
has it's place. It is an excellent way to build
daydream design centers, games, and banners. For
some applications, it is the only solution. Unfortunately,
it can do real damage to your marketing efforts.
There are several points you should consider
before using Flash in an extensive way, particularly
on the Home Page.
Most people still do their online shopping
at work. Blasting music from their speakers
is likely to get them busted.
Visitors come to your site for a purpose.
Unlike TV, it is not necessary to grab their
attention. You already have it. They should
be able to get where they want to be on your
site with a minimum of fuss. A long loading
sequence that just forces visitors to watch
a commercial can be extremely annoying, especially
the second or third time.
Flash is expensive. Animation is time-consuming,
and you can expect to pay for the creation of
original music and artwork or royalty-free clips.
Flash can be slow. The majority of your
customers are still using dial-up connections
to the internet and may also have an old and
slow computer. Large Flash presentations can
take minutes to load, and may display in a slow
and jerky fashion on older machines.
Finally, but most important, Flash seriously
interferes with the ability of search engines to
examine your web site. Anything written in Flash
is a black hole. If your entire site is developed
that way, it is virtually invisible to the search
engines. Few will ever see what a cool site you
have.
To illustrate just how dramatic the difference
can be, let's look an at online catalog with 300
products. Using the internet standard HTML for design,
you have the potential of over 300 sets of product
keywords, and have your company name repeated 300
times. When competing with the millions of similar
web pages, this can provide a significant edge.
A 100% Flash site will have only one set of keywords.
Some developers will attempt to compensate by
placing keywords in the invisible parts of the Home
Page. Unfortunately, people have been trying to
influence search engine rankings from the beginning.
Invisible content will actually count against you,
and may even result in rejection of your site.
