You’ve seen those flashy (pun intended) sites covered in animation and sound. Sure they seem slick and sophisticated, but do those really work in the B2B environment? Let’s take a look at some of the issues:
- According to Adobe (the maker of Flash), 99% of Internet viewers have Flash installed.
- Flash content is not accessible by search engine crawlers, making it invisible to search engines (doesn’t help SEO).
- Flash content is also not usable by persons using a text reader, and by many mobile phones (for now).
- Visitors have to sit through Flash content to get to the information they need. And if visitors can’t find information quickly on your site, they’ll go elsewhere.
- There are some types of information that can only be conveyed visually (or are better conveyed visually) with or without sound which can be done better with Flash than on a webpage.
There are other issues, of course, but these get across the big ones. My suggestion is to use Flash as a tool, not as a crutch. Use it sparingly and use it correctly. It should not be the main focus of your site and you should provide as much information as possible in a web page or other text document as well. Avoid creating a flashy website – too much movement and animation is distracting, adds to download times and becomes very annoying very quickly.
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