As a business owner you want a site that can attract the attention of a potential client. Having a unique identity is what sets you apart from your competitors. And so you need something interesting, something that expresses who you are and what you do. Flash can make this happen. It can animate your logo, assign relevant sounds to key areas of your site, and it can even play embedded movies. It is one powerful piece of technology. 

This makes it really easy for site developers to construct an entire site with it. This is often ignored by business owners, especially those who are not familiar with the different technologies. Many owners are just happy to see that site properly projects the vision they had in mind. So how can you determine if your site uses to much flash? And what is the big deal anyway? Lets start with a couple questions.

• When switching between pages, does the URL in your address bar change or does it always remain the same?

• When you hit the back button, does it "forget" and start over?

• When bookmarking a page, does it "forget" where you were when you return?

• If you search for your site on Google, is the description for your site missing, extremely short, or irrelevant altogether?

If you have answered yes to any of these questions, you may be a victim of a pure flash site. Many firms who develop sites like this do not understand the negative affect this can have on a site. In some cases the firm may have chosen this route since it appears to be the easiest way to achieve the design they have proposed. OK, so whats the big deal? It doesn't seem to be hurting anything, and it looks fantastic!

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Google and other major search engines tend to ignore flash sites. I am not going to go into great detail on this, but you may want to check out this article written by Brent Kaul on the subject. How your site ranks on search engines can determine if you are receiving 5 hits per week or 5000.

2. Navigation and Usability

As you may have guessed by my initial questions, Flash does not play well with the browsers navigation controls. It essentially does its own thing, however the developer decides it should work. That may sound nice, but people expect the back button and bookmarking features to work consistently. If they do not work on your site you risk confusing them. And a confused user usually does not stick around.

 3. Visitor Tracking and Analysis

Unless your flash developer spent a ton of time developing a highly advanced tracking system for you, your site is not compatible with most visitor tracking systems. You may be able to find out how many people are visiting your site, but you will not be able to see what they are looking at, for how long, and why they decided to leave (although that may be easy to guess....).

4. Mobile Device Compatibility

Most browsers today do support flash. But many PDA and Cellphones do not. These devices are becoming more popular for the "on the go" user. Even the Apple iPhone was launched without Flash support. A site built from the ground up in Flash, is invisible on these devices.

5. Accessibility

Visitors with disabilities may require the assistance of special software to help them browse the web. Sometimes this software is unable to properly process multimedia components. Additionally, sites with sounds and flashy animations can get in the way and make things confusing for these visitors. To be fair, Adobe has taken steps to make Flash more accessible, but it usually requires the developer to incorporate special information for these visitors. 

6. Scalability and Performance

Flash sites are not as easily maintained as properly constructed sites. Changes require a flash developer to modify the code and layers within the Flash file. A traditional site can be modified by just about anyone with a basic understanding of HTML. Shopping carts, blogs, and other web applications can also be difficult to integrate into a pure flash site. And lastly, flash can take longer to load since there is additional overhead involved. Your visitors pay a monthly premium for broadband and expect your site to load in a reasonable time.  

"OK.. I get it. Flash is bad."

On the contrary. I believe that when used properly, Flash can provide many benefits to your site. It is capable of doing many things that are nearly impossible via traditional methods. They key is, use it only when it is absolutely necessary. Content and copy should be published through traditional methods, while multimedia and advanced visual effects are perfect candidates for Flash.

If you are creating a new site for your business, insist that the developer or designer uses traditional CSS and HTML techniques. If you already have a site and it was done this way, you may want to consider having someone look into correcting it. How a site has been constructed can sometimes be equally as important as what it says.