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Should You Develop A Flash Website?

Over my span of career as a web designer, I’ve had clients enquire me to develop a Flash website. When asked the reason why, they replied because of the animations and stunning visual effects.

However despite Flash’s capabilities to do stunning animations  that can ‘wow’ the audience — still there are downsides that come with a Flash website. In this article I will briefly explain some positive and negative sides of having a Flash website. Hope it can help you better determine whether Flash is the right platform for your website project.

The Upsides: Why Should You Use Flash?

1) Animation & Special Effects

Flash makes it easy to create classic animations. Richminds Academy homepage uses Flash to create an animation that explains their business.

2) Games & Entertainment

Flash makes it easy to feature an interactive game or entertainment. There are tons of online flash games at websites such as Armorgames or Kongregate.

The Downsides: Why Shouldn’t You Use Flash?

1) Not Search Engine Friendly

Flash websites are not search engine friendly. Unless you have a non-Flash version, your website will suffer from lack of accessibility from search engine results.

A research by GroupM in 2011 stated that nearly six out of ten of customers use search engines to make purchase decisions. Therefore if accessibility and search engine friendliness are crucial to your website, it is advisable to keep away from Flash.

2) Discontinued Mobile Support

According to TechCrunch in 2011, Adobe has decided to discontinue their efforts to bring Flash into mobile devices. That means if your website is primarily targeting the mobile market, using Flash may not be a good investment.

(Update: On 15 August 2012, Adobe will no longer offer Flash for Android through the Google Play store)

3) Longer Loading Time

Due to its heavy content, Flash websites take up more time to load compared to HTML websites. If speed is an important factor for your website, don’t use Flash.

4) Some Animations are Achievable Without Flash

Nowadays if your animation is not too complex, chances are you can build the same thing using HTML5 or Javascript — and without any downsides described above. Better alternatives to Flash is on the rise.

Couple Lab website uses Javascript to create fading banner animation and color-changing logo.

Conclusion

A few years back, Flash used to be a promising platform to build great animations and stunning visual effects. However due to the of list of downsides that grow with the technology, and the availability of better alternatives — I would strongly advocate to use as little Flash as possible in your web projects.

Some final thoughts:

1. Use Flash only when absolutely necessary. For example if you want to feature a Flash game in your website, use Flash only for the game part; the rest of the website is better coded in HTML.
2. For simple animations, use Javascript or HTML5 instead. Both Javascript and HTML5 have the capabilities to build similar animations without the downsides of Flash.