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Health & Fitness

Is Your Flash Site Limiting Business Growth Online?

Flash is a great tool for interactivity and motion on the web, but it may not be the best tool for your website. If your company website still uses Flash, you may be limiting who can see your site.

As someone who is online for their job all day, I am often surprised by how many company websites are still built in Flash. Lest you think I am "anti-Flash", let me start out by saying that I really enjoy Flash motion design. I have personally been building Flash interactive tools for 12 years.  I believe there is good use for Flash online in select situations. However, as an online web consultant I generally steer my clients away from using Flash for their websites.  Many of them have already benefited from more traffic and page views by updating their Flash sites to make them more accessible.

Although Flash is a wonderful tool and can provide a wonderful and aesthetic experience for visitors, company owners should know the trade-offs if their site is using Flash.

1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Limitations.  While many excellent advances have been made to optimize Flash for search engines , sites designed with Flash can still present limits for search engine crawlers.  Many companies have converted their Flash websites for this reason.  As they say, "content is king with Google" and if Google can't view all your content, you may be doing your company a disservice by using Flash for your site. I have seen the full gamut in terms of Flash and search engine access to website content.  For many Flash sites, only the home page will show up in Google results, while others don't show up at all.  Even if you have been fortunate enough to find an good Flash designer who knows how to optimize a Flash site, there is still less control over how search engines will read your content. 

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In Google's words, "…we recommend that you use rich-media technologies like Flash primarily for decorative purposes, and instead use HTML for content and navigation. This makes your site more crawler-friendly, and also makes it accessible to a larger audience…" 

So if being visible on the web and attracting new business to your company is important to you, you may want to consider transitioning an existing Flash site to an alternative technology.  

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2) Load time. As I looked for Flash site examples, I decided to visit a site that listed award winning Flash sites, expecting that these would be done by professional Flash designers who knew how to optimize load time. The first three Flash sites I found took more than 40 seconds to load (I was on a fast cable connection). I finally gave up on those sites and moved on (just like customers will).  If you make your visitor wait, you'll probably lose them.  Rule #1 in web design, avoid long load times.  Flash can hurt you in this area if you're not careful to optimize the way the Flash movie loads. Visitors on mobile devices may have even longer wait times, which brings me to my third point:

3) iPads and iPhones do not display Flash content.  For this reason alone, several of my clients have opted to convert their Flash sites.  Apple recently reported their fiscal 2011 third quarter which ended June 25, 2011.  iPhone sales had grown 142 percent from the year before and iPad sales had grown 183 percent.  The popularity of this technology continues to grow and smart business owners can no longer ignore the accessibility of their websites on these devices.  A report by businessinsider.com found that 30% of iPad users now used their iPad as their primary computer. Furthermore, the most popular use for the iPad is web browsing and if they are browsing to your website you want them to be able to see it.

4) You can add pizzazz without using Flash.  Today there are so many tools that will deliver Flash-like movement and that "coolness" factor without losing your site points with search engines or being inaccessible on iPads.  Whether you want a transitioning photo gallery, an animated sequence or other Flash-like functionality, there is new technology that can give you much of the same visual impact while still ensuring complete accessibility to search engines and iPad/iPhone users.

Even Adobe, the makers of "Flash", recognize the need to catch up with the new viewing technologies and are previewing a new program called "Adobe Edge".  Adobe Edge will give web professionals a new way to do motion and interaction design while ensuring it is full accessibility to everyone. 

 If having read this, you still feel that the pros you will gain from Flash outweigh the cons then I say "go for it."  As I mentioned, there are select projects where Flash is still the best tool.  My goal is only to help inform my clients and now you, so that you can make the best decision and succeed with your online goals. I hope to see all the businesses in Glenview growing and thriving both locally and online.

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