A Beautiful Site Doesn’t Have to Be Built In Flash

The majority of my work comes from busy, small-business owners who understandably spend most of their time running their business and NOT browsing the web.  They understand they need a website or want some portion of their business to be available on the internet, but they’re not exactly sure how to go about it.  Sometimes they’ll point me to a site they like.  I hold my breath as I click-through only to discover the site is entirely Flash-based.  *SIGH*

Now to explain why Flash isn’t always the best solution to building a site.

1) Flash has a hard time being read by the search engines.  Unless you have the budget to pay for fancy Flash content management like those provided by Otterball, whose CMS delivers both animation and appropriate mark-up for engines like Google to comb the content, your site will not be read if its entirely in Flash.

2) Flash-based sites limit your audience.  As of June 2009, Flash can’t be read on those ever-popular iPhones.  While Flash can be read on iPhones by those ubber nerds who take time to jailbreak their iPhone and void their warranty, its safe to consider counting out that audience.  That is, iPhone users won’t be able to browse your site.

3) Updating Flash can be problematic once in the hands of the client.  If the site is to be content managed with a tool like Expression Engine, extra care will need to be taken on the part of the programmer so that the Flash displays the way it was intended, be it a slideshow, audio or video.  One little mistake such as a misread quotation mark can throw everything out of whack.  There’s nothing worse than viewing a Flash piece that’s gone awry.  Obviously omitting Flash removes that risk.

4) You don’t need Flash to have a media-rich website.  What do I mean by this?  You no longer have to use Flash to achieve some awesome effects for photo transitions or beautiful menus.  JQuery, a universal Javascript library used by developers can deliver the same rich media.  For your visitors, there’s no need to worry about whether they have the required Flash player.  There is once caveat: The visitor must have JavaScript enabled in their browser.  For most visitors, Javascript is already on and they don’t even realize it.

5) Consider elemental Flash as opposed to an entirely Flash-based site.  Trust me, I still find those fancy animations found in the headers of many sites beautiful.  Sometimes even libraries like JQuery can’t emulate the effects found in Flash. So if those awesome text transitions and post-produced video can’t be avoided, use Flash sparingly.

6) Will your audience truly appreciate the time spent to develop Flash?  Or is using Flash just for your benefit so you can tell friends, "Hey, look at my awesome Flash site."  Flash still requires loading screens, updated players and a fast connection.  If you don’t think you’re audience is up to that task, its time to reconsider using other tools like JQuery.

I’m not knocking Flash.  I spend the first 5-years in the industry mastering my skills in ActionScript.  I’ve simply found that the most beautiful and engaging sites aren’t using Flash as much as they did just a few years ago. Tools like JQuery make the site just as gorgeous.

If you’re interested in discussing your next project, be it a new website, a redesign, email-marketing, or just want to give your existing site a traffic boost, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.