How Much is Too Much Flash on a Homepage?
If you are not already familiar with “flash,” it can add beautiful imagery and style to a website. Flash can capture the eye of your visitor by presenting a type of “moving screen” or changing images, and can even “tell a story.” In this way it can be seen as a positive, as it can be visually appealing eye candy for many, especially if it can bring as visitor back to your website “gain and again.”
However, flash is not all “champagne and roses.” In opposition to its “beauty” many dislike flash for a variety of reasons. These are a few of reasons you may want to limit flash, or keep it to a minimum on your homepage;
1.) Slow website loading time
2.) Search engines can’t “read” flash information
3.) Some consumers find it “distracting”
4.) Not all portable communication devices have “flash” capabilities
The content or text of a flash website can be interpreted as any other website can, however, the portion of the screen that is the “flash portion” itself (although it may appear “attractive”), has no value in as far as SEO is concerned, and cannot be interpreted by search engine spiders. Therefore, in a sense some see it as “wasted real estate,” and very valuable real estate at that. But, there is recent information that suggests Google can now interpret flash, however, webmasters and marketers are yet to be convinced.
Even with all its beauty you may consider limiting its use. Flash does appear to be more challenging on a variety of fronts, as compared to other web design elements, and coding languages.