How to Use Flash Properly on a Business Website

Flash can be a great addition to your business website if used properly. You should make flash in your website as friendly as possible, so visitors do not get annoyed with the controls or the site's slow loading times.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Flash player

Use Flash Properly on a Business website

1. Avoid a long flash intro unless it directly lends to your company's branding. Always allow users to skip a flash intro, even while it is loading. Flash intros tend to annoy customers who are in a hurry.
2. Make sure your flash website works. That means testing it in every browser at different levels of bandwidth. Customers will grow tired of controls that don't do what they should or require them to reload the flash every time they return to a previous page.
3. Keep your navigation simple. The natural instinct of visitors to your website will be to use the back button built into the browser, which will cause the flash to restart. Make sure your navigation is clearly labeled and prominently displayed.
4. Consider using flash tutorials and demos linked from within your HTML website. This gives users a chance to browse (and learn about your business) before fumbling through an entire flash site. The added flash elements will create add-on interactivity without sacrificing loading times and ease of use.
5. Be sure to optimize each flash movie and page with a title and description. When used properly, flash sites can still maintain a decent rank on search engines.
6. Use small flash additions or ads that are localized on one portion of your website. Small, interactive flash enhancements can add a bit of pizazz to the page without overburdening the user.
7. Keep it simple. Avoid using flash for websites that contain a lot of pages and text content. Business flash sites should be more concise and visually based. Online stores with lots of products are usually best designed in something other than flash.
8. Optimize your flash movies for web viewing. Smaller files naturally load faster. When visitors are in a hurry, they don't want to wait a few minutes for your site to load, no matter how great it may be.

Tips & Warnings

• Creative businesses benefit most from flash websites. Web designers, architects and photographers can highlight the state-of-the-art feel of the design and highlight an image-based portfolio.
• In order for a viewer to see flash on your website, he needs to have a special viewer installed. Depending on your flash and how you built the movie, certain browsers will not load the content at all.