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How Flashy Websites Can Turn Off Customers (02/27/2004)
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If there were an official Web design "Hall of Shame," a special wing would
be devoted to the misuse of Flash. It's easy to spot a Flash offense, even
if you don't recognize it as such. The most common is a "splash" -- an
introductory page that fills the screen with a lot of animation, little
information, and a usually small, minimalist button that says: "Skip intro."
Such pages can all too easily bore, frustrate and turn off potential
customers. In addition to damaging the image of your business, they
can wreck your site's chances to be listed by major search engines.
Flash and its related software program, Shockwave, can be used to
create special effects, such as fluidly moving objects, images that
appear and disappear, animated cartoons, slide shows, and other
eye-catching visual tricks. As with all tools, when in the hands
of a skilled designer, these programs can yield a result that's
compelling and, yes, "flashier." But when wielded by a less-competent
builder, they can produce an online visual nightmare.
For a sampling of poor Web design, including poor use of Flash, visit
WebPagesThatSuck.com, the site of Seattle Web-design critic Vincent
Flanders. He's also co-author, with Michael Willis, of a book by the
same name (Sybex Inc., 1998).
Entrepreneurs should take care to avoid making their first Web sites
more complex than they need to be. "When you go to a Wal-Mart, you
aren't forced to stop and watch a movie before going in to buy
something, so why would you put one on your Web site? People have
already made the effort to find you," Mr. Flanders says.
Web designer James Ellis describes other Flash-related design no-nos
in an e-mail interview: "excessive flashing text, an intro that
doesn't actually load any content in the background, pop-ups, and
slowwwww animations to... emphasize... what... the... company...
does...." Plus, bandwidth-hogging Flash intro pages can be time-consuming
to load and even become unavailable to some visitors during periods
of high traffic.
Another drawback, critics say, is that Flash can hurt the chance of
a site being found by search engines, such as Google.com, which can
have difficulty reading Flash navigation. But designers can use
several tricks to get around the problem, such as adding hidden
hypertext markup language (html) tags that the search engines can
read, says Giancarlo Yerkes, art director for the Columbus, Ohio,
Web-development firm Synnapps Inc. And, for businesses that depend
primarily on local clients, search-engine position isn't always critical.
"Flash does have a stigma attached to it -- that it's all about
animation, annoying pop-ups and flashing text," says Mr. Ellis,
whose Internet-design firm, Quantum Serendipity, is in Sidney,
Australia. "This is fully understandable, given how Flash content
has been deployed in the past."
The Benefits
But Flash is really just a tool, and when used well, offers certain
advantages. One benefit is that pages will look the same under every
type of browser. "It's one of the reasons people use it. There are
valid html sites that don't look the same in every browser," says Mr.
Flanders. That's particularly true when using older browsers that
don't reflect more recent attempts at standardization. The software
is also particularly well-suited to online demos. "If you want to
see how a product works, it's wonderful," he says.
Mr. Ellis explains other reasons to use it: "Flash can quite easily
load in a listing of products from a database. Any of those products
can have dynamic images attached that can be zoomed in on. Selected
products can be placed in a shopping cart." A Web designer can do
this using html, but Flash versions, in this case, can load quickly
and use less bandwidth, he says.
Mr. Yerkes is a Flash proponent: "It's fun to use for a logo, but
it's not always necessary. I like Flash a lot because I believe
the Web will become something more interactive. At the same time,
I like to keep things easy to navigate and simple to use. Everything
needs a reason for being there." He says he used Flash when designing
a site for Muirfield Realty, a seller of homes set in a golf-course
community in Dublin, Ohio, "to show imagery of the neighborhood in a
cool way, with fade and transition. It's visually aesthetic."
Mr. Yerkes also used Flash for the site he designed for portable-toilet
distributor Rent-A-John, under the whimsical URL of "potty4u.com." He
concedes that he didn't need to. The opening page features a cartoon
of a portable toilet dropping into position, accompanied by clanking
sound effects. He used Flash for only the animation, which he added
because Rent-a-John liked the idea.
"We asked ourselves: 'What can we do to add to the site and have fun
with it?' " says Bill Reynolds Jr., the company's president. It's
drawing a good response, and Rent-A-John is painting "www.potty4u.com"
on all its trucks.
Higher Price Tags
Using Flash can add to the cost of a site. Mr. Flanders points out
that it takes more time to learn Flash, and not everyone can use it.
Having invested the time to learn the program, some designers feel
obliged to use it, he suggests.
"Flash is capable of doing anything a markup-based site can do,"
says Mr. Ellis. "Whether it's done well is another matter entirely.
Here, the developer or designer's skills are often confused with
the capabilities of Flash as a product."
For this reason, small-business owners need to focus on hiring the
right people to build their sites. "In my experience, Flash tends
to not increase the development time by a huge amount -- provided
the development-team members know what they are doing," Mr. Ellis says.
For business owners, Mr. Flanders thinks the decision whether to use
Flash should come down to: Will the added expense bring in extra sales?
"It's as if I told my wife that I bought a $3,000 Armani suit because
it would make me look good, when what I really need to do is lose
50 pounds," he says. "People confuse 'want' with 'need.' Ask yourself:
'Do I actually need to have this?' Will people write you a check with
a lot of zeroes before the decimal point if you use Flash?"
All business owners, but particularly entrepreneurs launching their first
site, should take the time to understand how a designer proposes to build
their online presence. "My advice to start-ups," Mr. Ellis says, "would
be to quiz their developers on their skills, get references, links to
previous work and find out their thoughts on which technology is best
for the project before signing on the dotted line."
-- James A. Ambrosio
Source: Startup Journal
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