The Problem With Flash

I’ve made my peace with Flash in some instances. It can enhance some sites, if used properly. But I still have a major problem with people offering “Flash Websites” without telling their clients what the drawback is.

There are two primary problems with Flash:

1. People don’t like it if it is used wrong. They don’t like Flash intros (they waste time), and they don’t like things that move and jump to much. That cute little button animation that makes them say “ooh” (a very short “ooh”, by the way) the first time, ends up annoying them by the 10th time.
2. Search engines can’t read Flash. That means anything in a Flash animation is invisible to a search engine. That may change someday, but at the current time, I’ve yet to see a Flash site rank for any content within the Flash animations.

So the real problems come in from the three biggest improper uses of Flash – those uses which result from a designer’s desire to do it just because they can, or a business owner’s impressionability with moving objects.

1. Intro pages. Flash splash page that serves as the home page of a website, with no meaningful content, just something that moves. That makes your home page annoying to visitors, and invisible to search engines. They don’t pay much attention to the metatags, so you can’t compensate that way.
2. Flash Navigation. That will make the REST of the site invisible to the search engines also, because they can’t see the links that lead to the other pages. Flash Navigation is a marketing killer for a microbusiness. Cutsy flipping buttons are also annoying after the first flip or two.
3. Flash Websites. When the entire site is done in Flash, you’ve just hidden your site content from the search engines. You’ve also made it unfriendly for the disabled – this is especially true if your text is hidden in a Flash animation. If your site consists of nothing but Flash, it may not even have more than one page – so it looks like a one page website with no content to the search engines – not real helpful!

If you have the money to overcome this through backlink building and other tactics, then it doesn’t matter so much (except for the accessibility issue, which is still a major concern – but maybe you have the money to stand a lawsuit too…). But if you are a shoestring startup or a struggling microbusiness who needs the biggest bang for the buck, then Flash ain’t it! It will cost you more to start with, and then go on costing you in lost traffic for a very long time.

Worth understanding how it works, because it can save you a boodle if you do.