The qualities Macromedia Flash® presents can be impressive and many a ‘great’ looking website have been created using it. However, a completely flashed-based website has multiple and severe disadvantages from a marketing perspective. First of all Flash® was not created to make websites into movies; websites are websites and movies are movies. Google™ ranks websites with the use of type of Internet robot that reads every website on the web. When the GoogleBot finds Content (text, slogans and other written material) it organizes the collective website’s total material and places it into categories and ranking systems. The more text a site has the more likely it is to appear at a higher ranking. The more links a site has the more likely it is to be categorized among other highly ranking websites. When the GoogleBot comes across a Flash based website it is ignored completely resulting in scant web presence and a waste of resources. In addition:

1) Text within Flash® is NOT indexable – When a Flash® file is created it functions as a small movie regardless of how it is viewed by the potential customer. A robot cannot read nor recognize any text within a movie or Flash® feature, therefore any Flash® text will also be absent from any Internet ranking and indexing systems such as Google™.

2) Flash® on a DSL line can take over a minute to load - In an ideal scenario a customer will spend up to 12 seconds waiting for a website before they set off to another part of the ocean (e.g. another website), in the average case the patience factor is considerably less.

3) Flash® in place of graphics – Some web designers have placed graphics within Flash®. This type of development not only wastes file system space, but also defeats the purpose of marketing a website because it takes forever to load.

In summary, the advantage of using this type of media is the ability to add visually stimulating motion graphics and to create smaller windows of highlighted data. When used in excess Flash® minimizes a company’s web presence and ensures low visibility on-line. The optimum balance of content (text) and image based material in a website is another way GD design© gets our clients noticed and keeps clients’ visibility strong.