Flash sites

[multilingual]

Will be building another new site in the very near future.

I have tended to keep clear of sites with lots of graphics and Flash in case customers are on dial-up and the page takes so long to open that they get bored and click elsewhere. Just been building plain text sites in html.

Most of my business is based in the UK, and with broadband becoming more popular, I am wondering if you think Flash sites are still something to be avoided?

Is this still an issue that affects online business?

Cheers

JB

 

[SuffolkDesigns]

It's my belief that people are moving away from flash based sites back to more simple easy to navigate sites.

 

[TechFox]

Most sites that use flash now only use a little flash - for animated logos etc - and do the rest of the site in html

 

[TWD-Tony]

Flash has major SEO issues, search engines find it very very hard (if not impossible) to read flash files and follow any links contained within them... :cry:

 

[multilingual]

Cheers.

So from a build and SEO point of view, would it be ok to add a lttle Flash, (just to make the site stand out from the rest), so long as I build most of it in simple html?

:?

JB

 

[Enigma121]

It's my belief that people are moving away from flash based sites back to more simple easy to navigate sites.

Depends on who the "people" are. Big corporate clients still like to use flash, because they also use PPC and bought in links, with a suitable budget ANY site can get to the top of the search engines.

Also some companies are so big that they get to the top of the search engines from the sheer volume of natural backlinks that they have, so don't need to worry much about flash content.

In general you are right, as most small / medium sized firms can't afford massive online advertisement budgets, so they build smarter more search engine friendly sites that need less "artificial SERP rank" support.

Interestingly enough, sites that are accessible and comply with W3C standards seem to do really well. These sites (ours is an example) may be viewed as a little plain, but can generally be viewed on a wide range of browsers without compatibility problems.

 

[epiphany]

It's my belief that people are moving away from flash based sites back to more simple easy to navigate sites.

Just to quote you again There was a massive up turn in the use of flash over a good couple of years until the power of search engines started to be utilized. As you say people are and have been moving away from flash for quite a while now.

Yes if you want something nice within the site use flash but definitely don't make the whole site out of it!

 

[multilingual]

Epiphany

Yes if you want something nice within the site use flash but definitely don't make the whole site out of it!

Thanks



JB

 

[Magsite]

Is there a site where you can use to check the download speed of a site. I'm just wondering how long it takes to download my affiliate site on dial up? cheers Lisa

 

[Enigma121]

Lisa,

I like the following tool:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

If I'm looking at the right site, it's suggesting that your site loads in around 10 seconds on a 56k connection. As a rule of thumb you should aim to get this down to less than 8 seconds, probably achievable with a little graphics optimisation.

 

[TWD-Tony]

Is there a site where you can use to check the download speed of a site. I'm just wondering how long it takes to download my affiliate site on dial up? cheers Lisa

Browsing speed is more often than not controlled by the users connection, Network traffic, PC spec (and condition) and server load. It cannot be acurately tested from taking a "snap shot" from any one place at any one time.

Dial-up users are used to waiting for webpages (no offence to dial up users) so they are far more forgiving than Broadband users :wink: