laptopArtists can be very obsessive type people. Face it; it can be a main ingredient for great art. But not all obsessions are good. Flash driven websites fall into the “not good” category.

But they look so cool….

Artists are visual, so they are naturally drawn to these flashy websites. In fact, companies that build them know this. And they go out of their way to target artists, especially photographers.

Who doesn’t want their big beautiful images scrolling in front of potential customers?

The Nuts and Bolts of the Flash Website Issue

A few reasons why I don’t recommend these types of websites:

  1.  They are not at all search engine friendly – those potential customers will never find you.
  2. They can take too much time to load – are those who find you patient enough to wait for the images to appear while the hour glass turns. (These days, you have less than 5 seconds to impress your visitor.)
  3. The viewer loses much of the control in moving through a flash website.
  4. Normal browser tools do not work. (example: no back button)
  5. Maintenance never gets done. Once a string of images has been loaded, artists never want to go back and deal with it again.
  6. There are no “inside” links to the website. There is no way to link directly to a specific image or page within the website.

A flash website works contrary to the rest of the web world. And it doesn’t take much to frustrate visitors on websites. Simplicity is always best.

If you’ve been thinking about getting one of these flash driven websites for yourself, well… you may want to rethink that and take some time to investigate your options.

Filed under: Websites

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