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.

1. Most people still do their online shopping at work. Blasting music from their speakers is likely to get them busted.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.