Flash This!!

These days it seems like practically every new site you visit uses a Flash intro, header or navigation scheme.  What most business owners aren't aware of is the real reason for Flash's popularity.  But I'll get into that a bit later.

Let me begin by establishing up front that, as both a Web user and developer, I'm an avowed hater of Flash, except in a few circumstances.  Why?  Consider the following scenario.

As a business owner, I need a program that will integrate several IT processes my company uses but I'm not familiar with what's available.  I do a Google search, but don't find anything that looks promising.  I then post to a message board related to my industry, outlining my requirements and someone responds with a link to a Web site that offers a program that might work.  I click the link and here's what happens;  I initially get a blank page but, after a few seconds, an animated progress bar appears in the center advising me that something is "loading" and asks me to "please wait."  After another 20 seconds or so, the progress bar is replaced by a black box, in the center of which a logo for XYZ Company appears, then moves to the top right corner while the words "Skip Intro" appear in the bottom right corner.  This is followed by a series of short sentences that, one-by-one, appear out of the background then slide around the box, ending up at the top left corner.  Finally, after about a minute, this "splash" page is replaced by the site's main page that finally gives me a description of the company and its products.

Another observation that comes to mind is that XYZ Company, itself, must have felt that the movie was superfluous.  Why else would they have given me the option to "skip" it?

Next, recall in our scenario that my Google search failed to find XYZ Company.  Why?  Thank Flash (and a not-too-smart Web developer) again!  The contents of Flash movies are invisible to search engine spiders.  Consequently, when Google's indexing spider arrived at XYZ's home page, it found no text to index and no links to follow so it simply gave up and went away.  XYZ's products and support may be the best on the market but the search engines have no way of knowing this and no way of finding the site.  For all intents and purposes, XYZ's site is invisible to both search engines and potential customers.

So why is Flash so popular?  The one-word answer is "Greed."  Like many other site owners, XYZ's Web developer convinced them that their Web site has to be "Cool" and "Cutting Edge" to be successful and that Flash was the best way to accomplish this.  The kicker is that the developer probably charged XYZ two to three times the normal base rate for developing the Flash movie.  Unfortunately, most new businesses trust their chosen professional developer to tell them what will work best but the business owners never ask the critical questions; "What does this element tell visitors about our products/services," "Could we provide the same information faster using another method" and "Is this element likely to turn a shopper into a buyer?"

The bottom line is that XYZ paid hundreds of dollars extra for a home page that very few people will ever see, annoys most potential customers who do manage to find the site and, thus, loses untold numbers of sales to inferior competitors!  Still think Flash is cool?

Post Script:  Now that I'm done Flash-bashing, I will allow that there are several types of business sites for which Flash is perfect.  These would be entertainment, band or visual arts sites or those that sell computer games, products for children or sporting goods.