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Do B2B Customers Prefer Flash?

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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B2B Advertising Going Increasingly Online

B-to-B Magazine: Outsell: B-to-b digital ad revenue to top print revenue by 2009 – The report said b-to-b print revenue is expected to account for 34.3% of total b-to-b media revenue in 2009, compared with a 38.6% share for digital products. Events are expected to account for 27.1% of total revenue.

If you haven’t already, you should consider putting more of your advertising budget online. This data is from advertisers, but the Internet is already the type of media used the most often at work and where decision-making buyers turn for more information and research. You want to be where your customers are – online.

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B2B Tagging

You’ve seen the tags that you can add to your Flickr pictures, YouTube videos, blog posts, submissions to Digg, etc. These are important because they change how we can find and use information:

Why is tagging important? Because you no longer to have to “file” information in one “folder.” Information can be tagged with multiple keywords or keyphrases and then “exists” within these multiple places. Usually you can search for information based on words included within it, meta information (usually invisible information used to describe the type of information), and the keywords. This allows multiple ways to find information and usually results in a more satisfying search experience (more – we still have a long way to go).

Tagging on a customer-centric website allows your visitors to determine how to organize your information (instead of you), which leads to a more satisfying experience (so they’re more likely to come back). Tagging can also be used to tie various pieces of content together which you can use to show your customers what other people tagged with the same tags, most popular content, etc. which also gives your customers a sense of community.

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