3 Reasons Why You Don’t Want A Flash Website
As an internet marketing company that designs and builds websites for small businesses, we at Mainely SEO get the question time and time again when we meet with new, potential clients…
“Can you make our website like the ones where things pop up and fly by, there’s music and it just looks really fun and cool?”
Each and every time we tell them “You really don’t want to do that [in fact, we won’t build Flash websites] and here are three reasons why…”
Flash websites [those created entirely in Adobe Flash] may be visually appealing with all the fun and excitement they usually contain, but there are several reasons why a flash website isn’t the best option for you or your business and how it can actually do more harm than good.
- Search engines cannot read your website. The search engines [or Google spiders are they are sometimes referred to] look at your Flash code and freak! There is no text to read, just code which means those Google spiders didn’t get a thing from your website. That’s right, your pretty little Flash website is useless as far as letting the search engines [AKA potential clients] know it exists. There are virtually zero SEO [search engine optimization] opportunities for those that choose to use this website format. Also, if you have news of any sort to report, no one will know about it.
- Accessibility. Flash websites take too long to load! If you have ever accessed a Flash website, which we all have, you may have noticed that you sit, staring at your screen a little longer than usual, hoping for something or anything to happen. Once something does happen you have the choice to either view a video which is usually just an elaborate showing of that businesses logo or you can skip it . These sites take too long to load because you have to upload all of the scripts, pictures and animations. The other major accessibility issue is that if you have an iPhone [an estimated 65% of people that use a mobile device for mobile web browsing are using an iPhone ] you cannot see a Flash website. You are just setting yourself up to have an effective barrier between you and mobile device users and you don’t want that.
- Limited Analytics & Visitor Information. A crucial part to having a website is being able to see how your website visitors are engaging with your site, how many pages they visit, the bounce rate [how long they visit one page and then leave] and how long they stay on your website absorbing your content. A Flash website requires extra programming knowledge to integrate Google Analytics into the Flash. Depending on your budget, this could be a daunting task and to be quite honest it’s just not worth it.
You may or may not remember, but back in April 2007, MTV switched from their Flash website back to a HTML website. They had a Flash website for a total of nine months, but after a lot of criticism, they got rid of it. There were several reasons for this, but the top reasons were; it was faster, the navigation was simplified and there would be an accurate internal search.
Remember that each site visit is a gift, don’t waste it! If you choose to use Flash in your website, use it sparingly to enhance your website and web content, but please don’t use it as all of your content. If your website is in Flash now and you are considering a re-design, please give us a call for a free consultation!