Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Should Your Web Site Use Flash?

Owned by Adobe Systems, the same company that produces Photoshop and Dreamweaver, Flash is a software application that allows you to add animation and interactivity to your web site.

Flash is commonly used to display interactive pull-down menus, interactive advertisements, interactive videos, and even interactive video games.

Despite it's useful and creative functionality, using Flash is a controversial topic amongst many web designers and developers. As for me, I highly recommend that small business owners don't use it.

Here are three reasons why:

1) Slow Loading Time
Using Flash can slow down the loading time of your web pages. If your web site is designed entirely using Flash, people may have to wait up to 30 seconds or more until the loading completes. In my opinion, a visitor is very likely to leave your web site and find another one - opposed to waiting around for it to load.

Even if your web site moderately uses Flash, it can still cause a loading delay.

2) Not Search Engine Friendly
Using Flash can make your web site look and feel more interactive, but it can also make your web site invisible to search engines. This is because search engine algorithms are written to crawl images and text, not flash applications. If you conduct a search with any keyword of your choice on Google or Yahoo, I'm willing to bet that the top ten listings will be web sites that do not use Flash.

3) Not Mobile Friendly
More and more people are using their cell phones to access the web, and guess what? Web sites built using Flash will not display correctly when accessed from a mobile device. If your entire web site was built using Flash, it will not display at all.

Apple, who has the fastest-growing marketshare for mobile devices, has purposely excluded support for Flash web sites from the iPhone and their soon-to-be-released iPad. In fact, they are endorsing an up-and-coming competitor called HTML5 instead of Flash.

In conclusion, I think Flash has its place for web sites that allow users to watch videos and play video games. I also think it's okay for major corporations who aren't very dependent on search engine traffic. But for most small businesses, I would suggest to steer clear from using it on your web site.

2 comments:

  1. THANKS!!!
    Points 1 & 3 I knew but Point #2, I never thought of. Thanks again.

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  2. Great post! I hope more small business owners take heed of this advice. As pretty as Flash can make a site, it also can have negative consequences. I've left many a site I saw on the go because I couldn't get past the Flash homepage on my Blackberry. Again, great post!

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