Why Flash is the Devil
I have a bone to pick with photographers and web designers.
I’ll admit it. Flash is cool. There, I said it. But I generally hate it on websites. Why? Let me give you a real world example. I had to find a photographer to interview for a certain magazine I occasionally write for. I put an ad in Craig’s list asking for the type of photographer I needed to contact me with links to their portfolio.
As you might expect, I got a lot of responses. (The magazine has a large circulation.) I went to each website and looked at the various portfolios. Almost all of them used Flash. Therefore, almost all of them were a real pain to view.
Now, I have a fairly fast DSL connection, and it still took 3-5 minutes for some of these sites to load. One took almost eight minutes.
Another loaded in 5 minutes, then gave me no indication how I was supposed to get into the site. I couldn’t just click on the screen and move on. It turns out you have to click one of the pictures that appear and disappear randomly if you want to get in.
All of this is completely ridiculous. If you’re trying to attract clients via your web presence, your site has to do a few very important things:
1) It has to load easily. As a consumer, I am not going to wait more than 7-10 seconds for the site to appear. All of those folks that work in photography and web design (or other heavy visual media) have to remember that the rest of us (i.e. your clients) don’t have your high-end equipment.
2) It has to be easy to navigate. I’m sure the person with the random pictures-thing impressed her friends with her artistry. But if she wants to make any money, she really needs to impress her clients with the site’s ease of use.
3) It has to contain enough text to get the message across. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but no amount of pictures will tell me why I need to contact you right now.
The moral of this story? Use Flash if you must, but give your clients a way to skip it (and then tell us how to do it). Your clients won’t buy from you if they are annoyed at your site.