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Some web designers love flash websites.
Some of your competitors may have them too. So, you may be
thinking of getting one for yourself or your business. Don't do it. Flash
websites are bad for you.
What are Flash websites?
Why are Flash websites
bad?
What are Flash Websites?
Flash websites are websites where
everything is animated - the graphics as well as the text.
Here's an example of a flash website -
We Choose the Moon
Why Flash Websites are Bad
for You
The website shown above takes a while
to load but overall it's a really cool looking site. So, why
shouldn't you have a website that looks cool like this too?
Several reasons:
1. Flash
websites aren't search engine friendly.
This is the biggest reason flash
websites are bad for you.
Unless you have a huge advertising
budget or your website's content is so amazing that thousands of people
will voluntarily link to it (like the Apollo 11 website above), then you
are going to want your website to do well in the search engines like
Google and Bing so you can get free traffic to your site.
In order to rank well on Google, Google
needs to know what your website is about. One of the major ways it
knows is through the text on your website. If your content is all
about strawberries, then google thinks "Ah-ha! This site is about
strawberries." and will rank it with the other sites about strawberries.
With flash websites Google can't see
the text content of the website. Google just sees flash as an
image not text. So, with flash, google won't know what your
website is about.
It is s critical to your website's
success that you optimize it for the search engines so it does well.
Flash websites make that really difficult if not impossible for most
non-techies.
2. Flash
websites are expensive to maintain.
Since flash websites are made up of
graphics if you want to make a change in the text or content of your
website it's a real hassle. The changes need to be made to the
original source, then the flash file(s) need to be re-created. It
is not something you can just 'learn to do on your own' unless you want
to spend a lot of time, effort and money doing so.
Every time you require a change to your
website, it will cost you money - usually $50-$100 per hour of work.
3. Flash
websites can become useless if you and your web designer part ways.
In order to edit a flash website, the
original files are required, not just the files most web designers load
up to your web hosting account. Without these original, editable
files, your website cannot be changed without completely re-creating the
original files.
If you and your web designer part ways
it will be almost impossible for you to hire someone to make changes or
updates to your website for you. The new web designer would need to
re-create the original files which could end up costing you as much as
you originally paid for your website in the first place.
4.
Visitors don't like flash websites.
When you click onto a flash website do
you wait on it to load? Or, are you like most people who just hit
the back button and find another website that is faster?
It's hard enough to get people to your
website you don't want to do anything that will cause them to hit the
back button and having a website that takes a while to load will cause
at least some visitors to leave.
Last Thoughts:
Flash websites are bad for you BUT
having some flash on your website is okay. For example, a header
that has flash movement in it is okay. The search engines can
still see your website's content, it loads fast and it's easy to get a
new one made if you and your web designer part ways.
A regular non-flash website is much
better for you. I recommend that most people build a website
themselves but if you don't want to build your website yourself,
click here to hire a web designer.
Related Articles:
How do I Make My Own Website?
- easy tutorial that I created that shows how to make a website.
It's great for beginners.
How to
Get Traffic to Your Website - in this tutorial I give you some tips
on how to get traffic to your website and how to improve your search
engine rank.
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