A while back I wrote about an article that showed how you can get a flash site ranked in the search engines, particularly Google, due to some technology advances in both Yahoo and Google’s spider.
Today at Clickz.com, there’s an article giving some pointers on how you can do this.
Here’s a quote.
Think Flash Movies, Not Flash Sites
Must a site absolutely, positively be formatted in Flash? All too often, designers and Web site owners want Flash, but the target audience may not. Flash can often be used on only part of a site and still convey the “wow” factor of a 100 percent Flash-formatted site.
For this strategy, utilize Flash movies whenever appropriate, and place the movies on HTML pages containing text for the search engines to index and a navigation scheme they can follow.
We might create a “Take A Tour” site section in Flash. We then create a page named “tour.html” and put the Flash movie in a pop-up window. On the site, we feature the “Take A Tour” link in the global navigation. We may add some embedded text links or self-promotional banners as extra incentive to click on that link. We optimize the tour.html page for the search engines, as well.
IKEA.com uses Flash well. IKEA uses Flash to show people how to construct various pieces of furniture, such as a bookshelf.
I highly recommend focus groups or usability testing before launching a Flash site. You may find the target audience likes the Flash, but only in a specific site area.
Amen.
Since so much of my audience reads the lastest posts in their feed readers, I make an effort to keep this a no-frills site whose individual posts are viewable in your reader, in all parts of my site, so that when you follow a link to other parts of the site, you’ll still be able to follow along without turning your reader into more of a memory hog than it has to be.
Many people like the slick interface of Flash, without thinking about how their clients and visitors are going to feel about viewing their site. I almost always click the HTML version – if it’s not an artist site, I really just want the information.
Not to say that there aren’t practical uses for Flash, or that sometimes I like going to a Flash site just because it’s cool. The point is, if you run a business site, you should be catering to your lowest common denominator of viewers. You’d be surprised at how many buyers either don’t download the Flash plug-ins (many early adopters of new or alternate browsers) or purposely have things like Flash turned off to get their information faster.
If you don’t cater to these people, many of whom are most likely to buy, you could be missing out on a significant number of sales.
(My finger is sore now. What happened to my short and sweet idea?)
Back with more Google Tuesdays in a shake…
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