If you are serious about being found on search engines then you should avoid having an all Flash based website.  

Attracting the eye is undoubtedly a prime objective when it comes to traditional forms of business advertising. Advertisements need to work at light speed and be memorable in order for them to pay dividends for the advertiser. Take the ads we see on billboards, the backs of busses, the sides of taxis for example. They have a brief few seconds to grab our attention and leave a significant enough impression that we are likely to remember the product or service and follow through to purchase. Such ads rely on the use of whitespace,  beautiful design or something quirky to work their magic on us.  Of course the same principles work just the same in TV ads where the message has to be implanted in us in a very short space of time. Magazine or newspaper ads are similar - ad space being at a premium therefore the message has to grab attention before the reader turns the page. 

For years, clever marketing and design agencies have been creating short, sharp 100mph ads that captivate us and persuade us to buy. They use white space, catchy slogans and snazzy graphics - all with the same objectives - to hook us and sell us as quickly as possible.  

Then came along the internet! Websites started popping up all over the place - but blindly employing the same snazzy advertising techiques, designs and animations as traditional media. Businesses were soon knocking on the doors of “new media” agencies to sign up for the “Flash” treatment. We all remember - if your website didn’t resemble something like a mini “Minority Report” blockbuster film then it was naff and was never going to make any sales. So as the web blossomed, many traditional ad agencies and print design companies turned their focus towards the web and fueled the new media boom. The shift in focus brought about a massive demand for eye candy in company websites but this was soon to be detrimental to sales - but company’s woudn’t be told. Many companies believed that they just had to have something in Flash in order for customers to come in their millions. Well…as we all know they didn’t.

As a web design company  who started out in 1998 we saw the limitations of the Flash website boom very early. New clients would come to us on a regular basis with tales of woe about how their beautiful Flash websites were getting no enquiries at all.  The reason was simple - Flash websites are not search engine friendly and were not being found.

Of course whilst there have been “slight” improvements in the SEO friendliness of Flash websites, they are still extremely poor compared to any text based website. Search engines can’t read the images or the animations. Many visitors turn Flash off in their browsers so the content can’t be seen, but worst of all, they are not Accessible. So, to make your site all Flash in order to promote your business on search engines is nothing short of madness.

If all the above hasn’t convinced you then count the number of Flash sites you find in the top 10 results of any Google search!