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Flash Deadly Sins that can kill your web businessAlan Steward Looks like every client wants a Flash site these days but the reality is...as flashy as these sites may look, there are many negatives you may want to consider before delving into Flash. Deadly Sin One - Long Load Times This is the most obvious problem with most Flash sites. Flash files can get large in a hurry and if the page takes too long to load, your visitor will move on without even seeing your site. Ideally, you would want your Flash web page to load just as fast as a regular page with text and images. And yes, it can be done! Problem #1 - Images The whole reason why Flash was developed was to be able to use vector graphics on web pages. Vector Graphics are infinitely smaller than pixel based images, they can be resized to any size and animated without creating large file sizes. Unfortunately, many designers use regular pixel based graphics like photos in their Flash design and end up with huge files. Rule #1 for good Flash design should be...Use Vector Graphics only! Problem #2 - Sound What is a good picture without sound Once you have this great Flash animated page, you want to add sound to it. This is the #2 culprit resulting in large file sizes and slow loads. The trick here is to use loops. Flash Music Loops are ultra short slices of music, that when looped in Flash play great background music sound tracks that load fast and sound great. You can find Flash Music Loops at http://www.flashmusictracks.com These loops that are near CD quality and most are only 15k or less in size. They also offer a free Flash Music Player that allows for the music to continue playing even if the visitor switches to another page, you can even select a different music track or stop the music at any time while browsing, totally impossible with any normal Flash implementation. Another thing that helps keep file sizes down is to use low-res MP3 files for button effects and sound effects. You dont really need 128k MP3 quality when most computers speakers will sound just as good with 24k or 32k MP3s. Another easy file size saver...use mono! Deadly Sin Two - Missing Links This fact is often overlooked. When you use Flash Buttons and Links, search engines will no longer find your links on the pages. This can be extremely disastrous for your search engine rankings. Search Engines need to be able to follow links to successfully index your site. Plus, the more well placed links the robot finds on your site, the higher your ranking will be. When you use all Flash, you wont have any visible links and you effectively kill any chance of being found on search engines. Whats the answer here Use a Flash/HTML hybrid page. Even if you have Flash links, still try to duplicate those links on the bottom of the page in HTML code so the search engines can find them. Deadly Sin Three - Compatibility This factor used to be important but today its no longer relevant. In the early days of Flash, many web users didnt have the Flash plug in and they moved on to another site rather than to download and install Flash just to visit your site. This is no longer an issue. 99% of all web users will have browsers that can see Flash pages and you no longer have to design a Flash and Non-Flash Version for your site. If your visitors run for the hills rather than stick around to visit your site its the load time, not compatibility that is to blame. So what is a man to do You want Flash but you still want quick load times and good search engine rankings. It can be done but you need to design your Flash site with all these factors in mind. It is possible to design Flash Pages that actually load faster than many regular pages with lots of graphics. A good hybrid design with enough HTML elements can get you ranked well with the search engines. The FlashMusicTracks website mentioned above is a perfect example. It uses Flash Banners and Logos only, everything else is HTML. The site looks good, sounds good and everything loads very fast. So, you dont have to be afraid of Flash killing your web business if you use Flash wisely.
| | | | RELATED ARTICLES Blogging for Profits Bloging the act of writing to a blog has become one of the fastest growing trends this year and many internet gurus believe that this is the new biggest trend.Well, you might ask yourself what is the big deal I dont even know what a blog is Creating Your Own HTML Email Templates in Outlook Step 1 Color Psychology for webpages Colour is an aspect of a website that is often picked haphazardly and without any thought from a beginner web designer. The lesser known quality of the colour of a website is that it can greatly affect the mood of your visitors. It is because of this that a websites colours need to be picked carefully. Web Hosting: 4 Factors in Choosing a Hosting Company When choosing a web hosting company there are a whole lot of different factors that should go into your decision making process. One of the biggest factors should be: Colors for Your Website Oh Yes ..Colors! There are hot ones, cool ones, earthy colors, spiritual colors and every other shade in the rainbow! What colors should you use for your website Web Hosting: To Switch or to Stay That’s a question that can only be answered by you. Depending on your current status and relationship you have with your provider, along with your evolving business objectives and needs, can determine what course of action to pursue. What are your issues and concerns Ask yourself some basic questions and see where you stand after you’ve answered them. -Are you no longer satisfied with your current provider -Did they deliver on the level of services that you signed up for -Has technical support and customer service been to your satisfaction -Or has your business grown considerably, and the hosting company cannot provide you with the level of capability and technical support you require If You Build It They Will Come - Not Without Web Marketing! Im sure everybody has received an email from a company promising to get their website placed first on all the major search engines. Maybe some of you have even tried these services or may be thinking about it right now. Keep Your Website Up-To-Date In almost every business publication there are articles telling us how, as a small business, we need to have a website. This is very true! The Internet is where most people go to find a product or service that they are interested in or may have heard about. And, if your business is capable of serving customers throughout the globe, what better way to keep your information available to that huge target audience than an Internet presence Why Have An Article Website Know the fact If you need More Targeted Visitors to Your Site this Will get the Free Traffic Flowing If you dont know by now one the best ways to attract free traffic to your site is with articles. You find them in your email. You find them on any website that provides useful content. Take a look and you will see they are all formatted the same way. What to avoid to make your website design effective The effective design is this one, which is maximum simplified, conformable to your users because they are your main purpose. This one, simply and clearly announcing what is your website about. This one, quickly offering the users exactly what they are expecting to see on your pages without being troubled with insignificant information. The big mistake made by lots of web designers is to project their activities from their own point of view, without thinking about user. Working with Royalty Free Music When creating Multi-Media Content, Flash or Video Clips for a clients web site or CD Rom Project, the last thing you want is to get him in trouble with the law. If theres a need for music in a project, using royalty free music is essential. Hexadecimal Color Notation on the Web When designing elements for your webpage, you will often be called upon to specify a color. For example, the code for a span shown below specifies that the color of the text within the span will be yellow. Beyond Web usability: Web credibility Web usability: Its old news Basic Web Design Principles Home Page Link Popularity for a Successful Website: How Not to Go About Getting It A classic way of getting seen and noticed on the web is to make sure your site is linked to as many other sites as possible. The strategy of link-exchange has been so overused and abused that search engines are now wary of it and may penalize sites that are linking to "link farms", or to any other sites with non-relevant content. First Web Hosting Experience Well… youve purchased a domain name… created a pretty design… filled it with content… what now Is Reciprocal Linking Dead Is reciprocal Linking dead Affiliate Alternative; Google Adsense The Rise and Fall of Affiliate Programs Protecting Your Business From Spam Even being as careful as possible with my email address, I still used to receive more than 100 email messages a day, which is no exaggeration. Only about 10% of those emails were from people that I knew and the rest of the messages were unwanted email…”spam”. And I’m sure you can relate to my frustration. It is estimated that over seventy-six billion unwanted email messages were delivered in 2003, costing companies more than $10 billion each year. |
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