Web Design and Flash
We all know that Flash is pretty neat- it's good-looking, often interactive, and can be a refreshing departure from the standard table-based webpage. But when it comes to designing a website that revolves around Flash, there's more than meets the eye...
Why to use Flash
- Flash banners are an appealing, enjoyable way to showcase paid advertisements
- Flash applications are interactive, attractive, and encourage users to return to your site
- Animations can grab users' attention and entice them to explore your site further
Why not to use Flash
SEO... or lack thereof
- Sites that are designed from head to toe in flash have no on-page content. Literally.
- No body text
- No alt tags
- No title tags
- No alt attributes
- No title attributes
Or, to put it another way, sites that are completely designed in Flash have
Flash Navigation
- Sites that incorporate Flash navigation are a big no-no.
- Some designers have even referred to this design disaster as "the worst thing you could possibly do" for your site.
- All of the glamour and glitz will get you nowhere because...
- Search engines can't find your content to crawl in the first place.
Page Load Time
- Flash components require time to load... much, much more time than regular on page content.
- The longer it takes for your site to load, the more likely you are to aggravate your users
- More often than not, that discourages visitors from revisiting your website in the future.
The Future of Flash
In recent years, leading search engines, specifically Google, have announced that they are beginning to
crawl elements of Flash animation so that they may count, to a degree, towards traditional search engine optimization.
However, many developers and designers continue to strongly discourage the use of Flash in abundance.
While Flash may be pretty, it hogs up space on your page that you could be optimizing for constructive SEO; Flash doesn't contribute enough to the marketability of your company's website to make an entirely Flash-animated site worthwhile.
