Construction Contractors Community

WFCdesignPro · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 10 Location: Aberdeen, NC

Do you like flash? Well if you do, beware of how you use flash on your web site. Some people love the way a flash intro page captures the attention of a visitor but the fact is, most visitors don't like to be greeted by flash intros and will leave the site before they see what you have to offer.

Another disadvantage to flash is the fact that search engines can't read the script inside the flash, causing the page not to rank well in the SERPs. Your main index page not ranking well will cost you tons of traffic to your site. The index page is typically the highest ranking page of your site mainly due to the fact that directories and the like, won't link to secondary pages so the index page almost always has the majority of the inbound links pointing to it.

So how do you get the best of both worlds? Easy, build what is called a hybrid web site that combines flash with a standard html web pages so the search engines have plenty of code to read and users are greated with content and pretty at the same time.

We just completed a site that was built on this format, visit this site if you want to see how a hybrid web site looks. And to sum up this post, I would really like to know if anyone has had a flash web site in the past and how well did you rank with the site and did you track the bounce rate of visitors to see how many made it through the flash.

hazephase · Joined: 25 Oct 2007 Posts: 16

I hate sites that have flash on them , to think about it people spend so much on money on a getting it done and it done not work . The simple site always dose the trick for me .

chris2k5 · Joined: 10 Nov 2007 Posts: 14

Flash can add the "Wow" factor but it just makes everything more messy. Having flash as an introduction to your main site is great just try not to use it all over your site.

I think people pay so much for flash when you can have a simple layout that can do you wonders. Flash in banners only is okay. I just don't like flash everywhere. It makes it messy and complex which drives people crazy!

Grant1971 · Joined: 05 Nov 2007 Posts: 32

Sitting next to a designer who totally agrees with what you are saying, although they are nice to look at your conversion rate will decrease.

smartdesign · Joined: 22 Sep 2009 Posts: 14 Location: U.S

I think that when used in moderation, flash can be a great thing, but the fact of the matter is that many people seem to rely on it far too heavily. Flash-based websites tend to annoy me, and it seems to be the same way for a lot of clients out there.

Kolaalok · Joined: 12 May 2010 Posts: 10 Location: Indiana

The good news is that flash is now indexable by Google. The bad news it, it's going to be very different to modify a flash page.