When people used to build websites, Macromedia Flash was the best way to add animations.
These days there are other options, and Flash has fallen to the wayside. If you are thinking about using it to build your website, you should seriously rethink that decision. These five reasons should be enough to convince you to use something else.
Using Flash to build websites can be very costly. This is no big deal if you are a huge company that makes millions, but it can pose a big problem for others. There are a few programs out there that do not cost as much and they essentially do the same thing.
Why waste all of the extra money if you don’t really have to? The only time you need to use Flash is if it is absolutely necessary, and you can save your money for something else.
Flash causes webpages to load very slowly. One thing you should think about when designing a site is the fact that people have very little patience. You will not find anyone out there that is not bothered by sites that load too slow.
If your site takes a while to load, that will give people the idea that they can find the information they need quicker if they go somewhere else.
Animations are usually used to cover the fact that the content quality is not very great. This is not always true, but in many cases people try to dazzle people with graphics when they have very little to say.
If you have a site that is loaded with animations, it will lead people to believe that you cannot be taken very seriously. This is not always the case, but many times this is how you will be perceived.
Flash is not able to be searched by search engine spiders. The goal of any good site is to get to the top of search engine rankings. If you are not able to do this, there is very little chance your site will be able to survive for very long.
If search engine spiders have no idea what is on your site, they will skip over it when they are moving sites up in the rankings.
In order to view sites that have Flash animations, people will have to load special software onto their computers.
While some people will not mind this, this will prompt others to totally avoid your site in the future. Downloading anything should be a personal decision and you shouldn’t have to be forced to do it in order to view a website.
When you build a website, the message you are trying to convey should be a lot more important than having cool graphics and trendy animation. You should do everything you can to make people focus on what you have to say. This is why you should abandon all thoughts of using Flash when you are designing your site. The five issues highlighted above should be enough to convince you of this.