Over the last few years the word "Flash" and "Web Design" have become the antithesis of each other if you are interested in receiving a high search engine rankings. Flash programming while quite popular in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s is not as friendly to search engines which prefer HTML.
So one of the questions that I often get in my daily activity is, "What place does have Flash have in the online world?"
While I do not generally recommend using Flash as the foundation of your website development project, it certainly has its place in helping improve conversion.
The purpose of this article is to discuss the applications that we have found work for Flash in the online world. These conclusions are mostly taken from data driven decision making through both Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer.
If you care about search engine rankings, do NOT build a flash based website. Gone are the days that visitors come to a website and want to choose between an HTML or a Flash site. The exercise is pointless. Forcing the user to take an extra click to get to your web site will only increase the chances of losing your web visitor.
Flash based sites in the past were often very busy and distracting. The application of Flash itself was often quite flashy itself which often would pull the visitors eyes away from the core marketing message.
Flash is great for accenting key communication messages. Instead of building a strictly flash based website the best application of flash is to implement a subtle flash piece within your HTML based website. (I repeat the word – subtle)
The following are all great uses of flash.
When a new visitor comes to your website you generally have 3-6 seconds to influence them to stay longer. As described in an earlier post, the biggest thing you can do to influence this decision is by clearly stating why they should stay! The top banner is instrumental in making this happen. This is something we call a sales funnel.
Flash within a sales funnel can be helpful – if done properly. Here are some simple rules to follow when integrating flash inside of your flash sales funnel banner.
Don’t overdo it!
The temptation is to make a fancy show but think about the last time you saw something with too much flash. You MAY have watched it the first time, but certainly not the 2nd or 3rd time.
Want to improve the click thru rate of your ads? Flash is a wonderful tool to make this happen! We have shown an improvement in click thru rate of more than 3 times what we normally see in standard .JPG images.
Many of the same items mentioned above also contribute to building a successful banner ad that gets clicked on.
Gone are the days that website’s are built strictly in Flash. Flash however, can still be an highly effective tool to help in conversion. They key is understanding the usability component of the tool and building effective flash elements for your web site that will aid in converting visitors through to complete your site goal.
on
Thanks for sharing your practical wisdom here.
Flash makes our sites stunningly appealing, but we should not ignore its grave visitor distracting elements.
Your flash driven sales funnel concept is striking. Its something different from normal course of action.
on
Optimizing flash sites is always a cause of worry to SEO people, I guess search engines are still miles away from being able to crawl and make sense of flash content.
It is flash’s dynamics that make search engines difficult to determine what is relevant and what is not relevant.
Hope in the coming days search engines will equip their algos logical enough to crawl and list a flash webpage.
Thanks for the post.
on
Recently flash was being used mainly to showcase galleries and videos. But with the advancements of JavaScript and jquery flash is not used as much as before especially in the case of image galleries etc. But still flash has it’s uses in building interactive maps, video players etc..Hope Adobe will make it lightweight and more SEO friendly soon !
on
I believe Flash deters users at times. It’s slow and at times distracting. The 5 seconds we have within which to convince a visitor to stay or leave is lost if the Flash movie is slow and irrelevant.
The sales funnel is a good concept but the purpose can be messed up thoroughly if it’s not been well designed.
I am impressed with the sales funnel designed by Techwyse, it leads the visitor by hand, and makes him do an action, Click the Button.
DJ mentioned having a no loop to the flash movie, I wish other website designers cared about this. This was one of my pet peeves, never ending movies with no call to action.
on
Thanks DJ for educating the importance of using Flash in Websites. The top banner Sales Funnel example is really outstanding.