Now I’m not sure that the title above will have worked quite as well as it did in my head (think Queen…) but anyway – you’ll be getting used to my odd ways by now!
For many years Flash has been a pain in the behind for many sensible Internet marketers. Just this week a friend who has done wonders with introducing Architects to the world of social media (no mean feat!) tweeted that “The number of architects with flash-based sites isn’t diminishing…” . Now of course any design-oriented industry is going to want to look as good as possible, within their budget (or quite often beyond it, but that’s another tale…) – but is Flash really the best now? For the business as a whole – should Flash be right at the top of any business’s marketing strategy requirements? Somehow I don’t think so.
We hear every now and again about how the search engines now index Flash sites – that those of us who shake our heads and suggest this is not the best thing may now have to eat our words, but as Jill Whalen explains very thoroughly and reliably in her post on The Truth About Search Engines and Flash it’s not really the case and should still be considered as a whole before merrily spending oodles of your hard-earned profits on something that is quite likely not to add further to them.
Thankfully I have now perfected a “look” for clients (even over the phone) when they suggest they want to use Flash for their website – even Architects!
Just remember – just because you can does not mean that you should.
Funnily enough the most useful thing an architect can do to get traffic to their website is to claim their business on Google Places. This is because people search for an architect in their local area.
Next thing they know, they’re clicking on the site and waiting form the flash to load…25%, 28%, 34%… Right. Forget them, where’s the next architect in Surbiton?
Having trained as an architect myself, I understand the attraction. Architects like their websites to reflect their personality and by nature are not text based people. Before flash it was huge image sizes, remember that? Same problem.
The internet is a text based medium, when it comes to search. So start with the text and add to that. Images need text so they can be found, video needs captioning. One great picture targeted at your ideal client will keep them clicking when they left the flash site in 10 seconds.
Proud to be your friend Babs!
I agree 100%, flash websites look the great, but they don’t work the best for users. I use weebly, but I am considering building my next website in Word Press.
You can certainly do a lot more with WordPress, that’s for sure. We’re running an online workshop on using WordPress for your website over at http://www.blogmistress.com over the summer – details going up later in the week – that may be useful for you.