How to Maximize the Use of Flash Website Design for Web Efficiency
Flash web design has become incredibly popular and many consider it the key to successful web promotion. Yet, they are only partly true. Experts warn that Flash for the sake of Flash will reduce website performance. Only smart web design can combine the audio-visual features of Flash with other web development strategies for enhanced online presence.
Common Flash advantages
- Easy to use and view the animations;
- Great for website intros;
- Interactive website platforms that engage visitors;
- Independence from browsers and operating systems – you don’t have to worry about your website looking different for different browsers. There is no need for special coding or tables.
- It can be viewed by anyone having Flash plug-in installed on the computer;
- Animated ads that improve the click-through-rate.
A web master’s task would be to judiciously balance all these Flash benefits with other web design strategies so as to ensure optimal performance of the pages.
A successful web design incorporating Flash
- Intros and banners are not crawled by search engines, only text is indexed. Imagine an all-Flash website: it would be impossible to make such a website to rank well in search engines.
- Web designers embed Flash in HTML pages in the form of categorical-based catalogs, slide shows or photo albums. Text or captions added under Flash images will then be indexed by Google.
- Improving loading time! Flash audio-visual elements increase the home page size, making it more difficult to download. Web visitors are very time-conscious. They will most likely lose interest in your website if it takes too long to load.
- A solution here would be to provide a “Skip Intro” button so that visitors can move on to the website content.
- Mute buttons should also be available for music or sound included in the website.
- To improve the download time, Flash images ought to be optimized with the lowest compression.
The most successful applications for Flash web design are on websites that depend on visual presentations: music, photography and events-related pages. When visitors open such pages they are expecting a certain type of audio-visual. This is where Flash proves its efficiency at the highest level.
Adapting web design to specific website needs
Lots of website owners make the mistake of following their personal, subjective taste in the choice of web design. Sometimes, people resort to all sorts of DIY solutions and only when these fail to work as expected they turn to a professional for help.
In many such cases, web design needs to be taken from scratch. You can avoid all this hassle by focusing on a critical and objective perspective on web development.
- Evaluate your website business needs.
- Keep in mind that for promoting a business, the website needs to be the main platform of communication with the audience.
- Flash is excellent for rich media content and animation. Does your website depend on these?
- Can a static HTML website do a good job for your business?
Answering these questions gives a clearer perspective on web design and business growth on a web platform. The expertise of a skilled and experienced web developer is priceless in such cases.
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