Flash Deadly Sins - How Flash might kill your web business

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

Deadly Sin One - Long Load Times

This is the most understandible 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 page . Ideally, you would want your Flash web page to load just as fast as a regular page with writing and images. And yes, it might 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 making large file sizes. Unfortunately, many designers utilize regular pixel based graphics like photos in their Flash develope and finish up with huge files. Rule #1 for grand Flash develope should be...Use Vector Graphics only!

Problem #2 - Sound

What is a grand photo 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 file 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 great background music sound tracks that load fast and sound sizeably successful . 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 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 measure while browsing, totally impossible with any normal Flash implementation. Another thing that helps keep document sizes down is to make use of low-res MP3 files for button effects and sound effects. You do not really need 128k MP3 quality when most computers speakers will sound just as great with 24k or 32k MP3s. Another user friendly document size saver...utilize mono!

Deadly Sin Two - Missing Links

This fact is often overlooked. When you utilize Flash Buttons and Links, search engines will no longer find your links on the pages. This could be extremely disastrous for your search engine rankings. Search Engines 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 utilize 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 might find them.

Deadly Sin Three - Compatibility

This factor 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 site rather than to download and install Flash just to visit your website . This is no longer an issue. 99% of all web users will have browsers that can see Flash pages and you no longer have to design a Flash and Non-Flash Version for your web page . If your visitors run for the hills rather than stick around to visit your website its the load instant, not compatibility that is to blame.

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

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