Why use Flash on your Website?
To Flash Or Not To Flash
I have included here a part of a flash header that I use on one of my websites:
An addition to my article to add to the extraction Paragraph. An addition to my article to add to the extraction Paragraph. An addition to my article to add to the extraction Paragraph.
Flash Trends Today
It seems that every IT school and college today offer as part of their course flash website design and production. The result is that we now have a generation of young web designers who believe that every website must have flash - high tech. It never occurred to anyone to just sit still for a moment and think about why flash is required.
Flash is one of the elements with which website designers hold their customers captive. Once the Flash movie is mad part of the website header - the customer cannot change it. The only person that can change it is the website designer - for some payment.
When To Use Flash On Your Website
If the website is poor in content, such as just advertisements for some product,Flash is used to hide the fact that there is little content on the site. The flash animation takes the attention of the visitor away (for a little while) and the visitor does not immediately notice the fact that there is little content on the website.
Flash movies takes time to load and therefor a lot of bandwidth. When your audience is young people, it doesn’t matter because the normally have the latest technology. If your audience is older people it will most definitely have an impact, because the connection speed (on average) is slower. Flash will obviously use a lot more bandwidth on your hosting package. You have to strike a balance between your audience and their expectations and the performance of your website.
Flash and Visitor Expectations
When conceptualizing your website, you have to answer the questions: Why is the website visitor on my website? What is the website visitor looking for? What do I want the visitor to do while he (or she) is on my website?
The last question is sometimes the most difficult to answer. Do I want my visitor to buy something? Do I want the visitor to read my latest offering? After reading it, what do I want my visitor to do?
Once you have these issues clear in your mind - you have to answer the question: Would a Flash movie contribute anything to why the visitor is on the website and the actions that I want the visitor to take?
A Simple Example
Website purpose: You have a website that sells a service to its visitors and the mechanism used is educating the visitor on what normal service levels in the industry is and what to expect from the special service that you provide.
Flash or Not: Did the visitor arrive on your website to watch a movie? Or do you have a lot on content that my visitor actually wants to read? Do you want to entertain your visitors with a Flash movie or would you rather have them take the actions that you want them to take (such as buying your product)?
So Do We Flash?
If you have a business website, you would normally not put Flash on your website, because it detracts the visitor from taking the actions that you want him to take.
A visitor to a website normally arrives there because he or she is looking for information. That is - not to be entertained. A visitor will come back to your website, because of your website content that was of some value - not because the Flash movie was good.
Bottom line: If you have a business website - you will seldom use Flash.
