Why Flash Is Losing Favor In Web Design Flash, a program put out by Macromedia, used to be the darling of the Internet. After all, it allowed websites to run splashy looking animations, and some of them were very beautiful. It reminded people of video or television, and some companies had elaborate Flash components to their sites. Today though, you might notice that a lot of sites no longer use Flash, and there are a few reasons why. You might think twice about using Flash on your site after reading this article.
One of the most important reasons that Flash is terrible for your site is that it doesn’t help you at all with search engine optimization, or SEO. The web spiders that are sent out by the search engines do not recognize Flash. It doesn’t matter if you have a splashy, cool animation if you can’t get anyone to your site, and throwing away search engine traffic for an animation just isn’t good business.
Flash is not something that comes with every computer. In fact, it often needs to be updated as well. Do you think people want to be interrupted with a prompt to download Flash or to update it? Is the Flash animation worth that much to you, or will it add that much to your customers’ experience? If not, you don’t need to have Flash on your site.
If you don’t know how to program with Flash, you are going to have to have a professional web designer to do it. Is it worth the money? Think about that for a few minutes. You can have the same effect on your prospects without the Flash animation. What do they care more about? The animation or the actual content? Today, Flash almost seems like you’re trying too hard. Not only that, but you simply might not have the money in your budget just for Flash animations.
Flash causes some browsers to crash. You may think that everyone out there has high speed internet, but that is not the truth. Even with high speed internet, due to compatibility issues and different download speeds, Flash can cause components in your browser to stop working. Even if the Flash does not cause a browser freeze, everyone still has to wait for it to load. People want information quickly. They don’t want to sit for a few seconds while a Flash animation loads, no matter how slick and cool it looks. Things move fast these days, and if your Flash is causing things to slow down, people want to click away to something else.
Overall, it is important that you share relevant, interesting information with your audience. Flash can be a major distraction, and may actually cause people to want to click away from your site. Don’t lose focus; you want your prospective customers to care about what you are offering them, not how your site looks. Use the information here to make a good decision about whether Flash is for you. Chances are, it is not.
