Flash websites and embedded Flash

Flash web design looks good. It is impressive. It makes a website appear expensive, even though Flash technology is not all that costly. Flash web design provides a beautiful, affordable, professional business image. These are a few of the reasons why Flash is a wonderful tool.

There are also a few very important reasons to be careful when selecting Flash web design:

• The search engines have difficulty reading Flash, so if you want your website to be ranked well, we may need to build an HTML site under the Flash site, or for a less costly alternative we can place embedded Flash within an HTML website. Google does have the ability to index text found inside of Flash, but it is still very limited.

• Flash sites that get too involved take the viewer's attention away from the sales process. Fighting robots may look cute, but how does that help you make a sale?

• Music that one person likes may irritate another person.

The way to use Flash and avoid the disadvantages is to combine Flash with text. We like to use Flash to add color and movement to a text page. To see some examples of what Flash can do for a website, take a look at our portfolio. This is what Flash does best; it makes a static text page look colorful and creative. For another a good example of Flash movement, look at Rapture Pools. You will see that the water moves.

A website built entirely in Flash is suitable only for a business that has a very short business message, and is not really concerning about ranking well on search engines. If your message is detailed or complex, you have many pages, or need to be ranked well on search engines, use HTML, with Flash graphics to make the page more interesting.