Those Flash Animations Aren’t Really That Cool. Allow Me To Explain Why.
So, you’re hiring a web developer and you can’t wait to tell him about this awesome idea you have for a flash animation that will welcome in your visitors. It’s going to have the works, and your visitors will think it’s absolutely amazing. Stop.
What you think a fancy, snazzy, jazzy flash animation will do for your website will likely do everything but. And, I’ll tell you why.
- Flash animations aren’t the same as television commercial. Sure, like television commercials, most people will be trying to click the skip button, but likely they won’t be able to hear your flash animation and they might even be forced away from your site after your flash animation notified them of the need for a flash player update.
- Creating flash animations is not the fastest process in the world. This means you’re going to be paying your web designer a pretty penny for something you may soon realize you should have never put on your site in the first place.
- If your flash animation is set to autoplay, you might be upsetting some of your visitors who visited your gift shop website, not realizing they were about to get blasted with sound.
- As I hinted in the first point, it’s reported that 99% of internet enabled computers have flash players installed, but not all of those computers are guaranteed to have their players updated to the release that will be able to play your animation. Furthermore, older or hampered computers may freeze up when your flash animation loads.
- Unless your web designer really nails it, a flash animation is almost as surefire way to make your site look dated.
Hopefully, the information above will help you decide if you really want to add a flash animation to your site. I think flash animations still have their place on the web, but not on website homepages as greetings. A surfer can learn a lot more about your site with good pictures and text content, a clean layout and proper navigation.
Hello, I am Ryan. Web design and development is my passion. No job is too little or too small. If you have a need for a new or redesigned website, a new logo, or help with your existing site, I can provide efficient and affordable work for you.
I cater to the New Orleans Metro Area, but can provide my web design services to anyone across the globe.
Customer satisfaction is my highest priority. I look forward to hearing from you. If you can picture it, I can make it a reality.
I agree. I used to make a lot of flash intros and entire sites running on flash back in the early 2000′s. I still get some inquiries today (and still do them because I need the money). But really you shouldn’t have all kinds of flash stuff on your site. Not everyone has flash installed and search engines can’t “read” flash.