Great Flash Website but Very Little Visitors
A customer recently showed me a site and wanted to know what I thought of it. So, I went to the link, and immediately fell in love with it. Nice colors, quick loading, simplistic design….I right clicked on the page to see what menu options to see if I could view the source (viewing the source often reveals a lot about a site).
What? No option to view the source. Well, there are some options to Zoom in and information on Macromedia Flash. Now that’s interesting….beautiful site…but it’s Flash.
So, I began thinking of the pros and cons of this website to share with my customer. I definately don’t want to seem negative yet there are reasons to take a second look at our design to make sure that we are getting what we need out of it.
Here was my reply to the customer:
Yes, I have many thoughts about it. First off it’s beautiful! It’s Flash. Websites designed in Flash are beautiful to the eye.
But let’s analyze why there is a downside to Flash sites. It does not allow search engines to see any text. With that said, they won’t be getting any free advertising from the free search engine listings. Google and Yahoo for instance has no idea what this site is about except from it’s url.
My recommendations:
If they like the Flash website the way it is…an optional (HTML) parralel site should be created so that users that don’t have Flash and Search engines such as Google and Yahoo will be able to scan their website and pick up all of the keywords.
How it would work…people would go to the domain name and then they would see a choice to go to the Flash version or the HTML version. Also, a plus to this is that Disabled persons will be able to visit your website and have it read to them by screen readers. Right now that is imposible.
So, the point of my story? Well, avoid having a website that is completely Flash. If you want Flash, make sure that you provide plenty of content that is outside of the Flash.
I hope that you are able to benefit from my experience.