Flash Deadly Sins - How Flash might kill your web business

Looks like every client desire a Flash site these days but the reality is...as flashy as these sites can look, there are many negatives you may want to consider before delving into Flash.

Deadly Sin One - Long Load Times

This is the most obvious problem with most Flash sites. Flash files might get large in a hurry and if the page takes too long to load, your visitor will move on without even seeing your web site. Ideally, you would want your Flash web page to load just as fast as a regular page with text and images. And yes, it can be done!

Problem #1 - Images

The whole reason why Flash was developed was to be able to utilize vector graphics on web pages. Vector Graphics are infinitely smaller than pixel based images, they can be resized to any size and animated without building large document sizes. Unfortunately, many designers make use of regular pixel based graphics like photos in their Flash develope and end up with huge files. Rule #1 for dazzling Flash design should be...Use Vector Graphics only!

Problem #2 - Sound

What is a workable picture without sound? Once you have this great Flash animated page, you want to add sound to it. This is the #2 culprit resulting in large document sizes and slow loads. The trick here is to make use of loops. Flash Music Loops are ultra short slices of music, that when looped in Flash play sizeably good background music sound tracks that load fast and sound effective. You can find Flash Music Loops at http://www.flashmusictracks.com These loops that are near CD quality and most are only 15k or less in size. They also offer a free of cost Flash Music Player that allows for the music to continue playing even if the visitor switches to another page, you might even select a different music track or stop the music at any instant while browsing, totally impossible with any normal Flash implementation. Another thing that helps keep file sizes down is to use low-res MP3 files for button effects and sound effects. You dont really absolutely need 128k MP3 quality when most computers speakers will sound just as sizeably workable with 24k or 32k MP3s. Another easy file size saver...make use of mono!

Deadly Sin Two - Missing Links

This fact is generally overlooked. When you utilize Flash Buttons and Links, search engines will no longer find your links on the pages. This can be extremely disastrous for your search engine rankings. Search Engines positive need to be able to follow links to successfully index your site. Plus, the more well placed links the robot finds on your website , the higher your ranking will be. When you use all Flash, you wont have any visible links and you effectively kill any chance of being found on search engines.
Whats the answer here? Use a Flash/HTML hybrid page. Even if you have Flash links, still try to duplicate those links on the bottom of the page in HTML code so the search engines may find them.

Deadly Sin Three - Compatibility

This variable used to be important but today its no longer relevant. In the early days of Flash, many web users didnt have the Flash plug in and they moved on to another page rather than to download and install Flash just to visit your web page . This is no longer an issue. 99% of all web users will have browsers that might see Flash pages and you no longer have to design a Flash and Non-Flash Version for your site. If your visitors run for the hills rather than stick around to visit your web site its the load time, not compatibility that is to blame.

So what is a man to do? You want Flash but you still want quick load times and grand search engine rankings. It could be done but you absolutely need to design your Flash page with all these factors in mind. It is possible to develope Flash Pages that actually load more quickly than many regular pages with lots of graphics. A great hybrid design with enough HTML elements can get you ranked well with the search engines. The FlashMusicTracks internet site mentioned above is a perfect example. It uses Flash Banners and Logos only, everything else is HTML. The page looks dazzling, sounds great and everything loads very fast.

So, you dont have to be afraid of Flash killing your web business if you use Flash intelligently .