Flash - Bad Idea?

[ddzc]

Hi all,

I was going to build an all flash site here but do you believe this will cause less visitors/revenue due to compatibility issues? I was going to change my mind and do it all html for faster response times and higher traffic ratio b/c they wont have to install flash. I'll be selling services on the site and it will be towards IT/tech savvy people (Highly doubt any of them will be running 56k). I'm more worried about the indexing.

What are your thoughts?

 

[DN BROKER]

flash is not search engine friendly, stick to html.. or php

 

[shockie]

avoid using flash for web designing if possible, but if you absolutely have to then use something like swfobject to embed flash files because there's still a good chunk of people (and public terminals) that lack flash players on their browsers.

 

[nasaboy007]

as mentioned, flash is not at all search engine friendly. there are also a lot of people who don't have flash installed or others who simply keep it disabled. if you have your heart set on having a flash website, i suggest you try to make it so that maybe only parts of it are in flash (such as header, navbar, etc) but the content be in html. php would make it all easy.

 

[hyped]

Google and Yahoo can now apparently index flash sites (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/pos...piders-can-now-crawl-through-flash-sites.html)

I would not recommend it, though. I've always hated flash sites for one reason or another. One major reason to hate them is the fact that you can't just copy paste a url and send it to a friend if the url never changes.

I'm pretty sure that it would cost you more to have a flash site developed anyway.

Best of luck!

 

[shockie]

to be more accurate, flash files are only getting partially indexed and .flvs are exempt from this completely.

 

[homebuyer]

iPhone and Others

Remember to look at how a flash site looks on the iPhone, Blackberry Bold (when it comes out), the Samsung Instinct, and other near like kind phones that show full .com websites before committing to putting flash on your site.

 

[Xavier_3D]

Well don't go for complete Flash. Check mine - www.xyber3dstudios.com - NO ADVERTISING I PROMISE.

I made it all flash, but I added some chunk to my Footer, to actually make it indexable. Go for Flash if you want creativity, but as people already mentioned not all Flash.!

 

[trcgood]

I stick to html too.

 

[enlytend]

As others pointed out, Flash is now being indexed better than it used to be...

But I'd avoid an all-flash site because most of them are a poor visitor experience , especially for anyone who just wants to go to your site and find what they need. Tech people will probably be your LEAST patient visitors ... and might be running Firefox with the Flashblock extension besides.

Unless there's real content in the flash (like a demo or tutorial), just say no.

 

[weblord]

flash is all good for headers, that's just about it but don't over do it.

Hi all,

I was going to build an all flash site here but do you believe this will cause less visitors/revenue due to compatibility issues? I was going to change my mind and do it all html for faster response times and higher traffic ratio b/c they wont have to install flash. I'll be selling services on the site and it will be towards IT/tech savvy people (Highly doubt any of them will be running 56k). I'm more worried about the indexing.

What are your thoughts?

 

[tinner666]

Well don't go for complete Flash. Check mine - www.xyber3dstudios.com - NO ADVERTISING I PROMISE.

I made it all flash, but I added some chunk to my Footer, to actually make it indexable. Go for Flash if you want creativity, but as people already mentioned not all Flash.!

Your site won't load for me. Maybe you have too much flash. I dunno.

 

[dbkooper]

In the past, flash websites means death in SEO. However, adobe recently developed something to help search engines index the flash content. I think both google and yahoo are working towards better flash site indexing

 

[gjvblack]

Since computers today are being upgraded and are fast (in some ways with and without vista), i would say flash is good, but too much will kill your visitor loading patience, computers are fast but some are still on dial-up.

 

[Xavier_3D]

Your site won't load for me. Maybe you have too much flash. I dunno.

It was a Server Error. The flash content is hardly 150 Kb. Takes about 3 Seconds over a 56 K Connection. Please check now.

 

[Nathan]

Flash is nice and I personally like using it, but not to build websites. Realistically there are too many compatibility issues and search engine issues for it to be beneficial to use. If you do decide using it, I'd recommend offering a non-flash version of your site too.

 

[ecigs.net]

Flash is fun. I like it for experiments and amusing myself. For everything else, it is html/php.

 

[RTM]

Flash pages are OK as long as they load in sub 0.05s ... anything extremely long (say 0.25s to load is too long)... yes, I know, a bit extreme, but that's the way it is...

When I see preloader for more than .5s loading a page, I instantly hit back... and stats show that many visitors behave in a similar way.

That being said, flash *components* that are properly embedded in an xHTML compliant page can be code.. (witness YouTube and others)....

But...a full Flash site ? blech. Both for users and SEO.... (which go together)...

Just my $0.02.

Rob

 

[lux13]

some of our clients do not want that the sites have flash, for not to lose speed and security.

 

[Barrucadu]

Definitely do not go for a full Flash site - if you do, you more or less exclude everyone using Linux due to Adobe providing a rather unstable crash-prone Flash plugin for us.