We’ve all seen those really cool flash websites popping up here and there on the internet. They can look great because they have an added bonus of a flashy website. The graphics can be extremely eye-catching and impressive. If you’re a business owner considering a flash website, you should think twice before making your decision. While the look of a website is very important from a usability stand point, however you want to make sure that a flash website will be helping your business instead of hindering it.
When you are putting up a website for your business you will want people to find you in the search engines. This is extremely important to create new business. Flash websites can harm your chances of ranking in the popular search engines such as Google. A lot of flash websites are created on only a few URL’s. This means there are less actual pages to the site than you might think. A drop down on a page may have a list of topics but it is all housed on one page. This is a HUGE problem as you cannot optimize each page and the search engines will become confused about when the pages are about.
Content is king – but not necessarily with flash sites yet. Most of the text on a flash website is images. This is a huge problem as the search engines are asking for content and you are giving them images.
If you can get people to your Flash website, you will next need to deal with a potential problem as soon as they get there. Flash websites have more glitz and glamour, but what come along with it is the chances for the page to not load as quickly or look as it should. Even if the website has something cool for you to watch during this time, this is BAD. You want to control how quickly you go through a website, and flash websites are proven to have a higher bounce rate than most websites.