3 Guidelines for Creating Friendly Flash Websites

As I mentioned in my post 5 Reasons to Think Twice Before You Buy a Flash Website, there are many drawbacks of building your Web presence in Flash. However, if you understand the implications of a Flash website, and still think it’s the right solution for you, please be kind to your visitors, and keep these simple rules in mind:

Don’t have sound effects, and don’t start music when the site loads

I’m sure it’s happened to everybody – you go to a Website, you watch the Flash progress bar load, and when it's done, Muzak comes blaring out of your headphones, or you mouse over a menu and some crazed sound effect pops up. It’s not a pleasant experience. I, and many others, will often just leave a website instead of trying to find a mute button. You do not want to chase away potential customers for something that adds no real value. There’s obviously an exception here if you’re a musician, but even then, I would argue that visitors should opt in to the music, instead of having it thrust upon them when they arrive

Offer a text version

Using the <noscript> tag, you can create content that will load for users that do not have Flash enabled, and that's easy text for Search Engines and screen readers.

There are 3 reasons this is desirable:

1. So search engines can read it
2. So screen readers can read it for the visually impaired
3. So visitors on mobile browsers, slow connections, or who don’t like Flash can read it

Keep the file size as small as possible

Some Flash files can get very big, and people are impatient. If your website takes longer than 5 or so seconds (maybe 10), you will lose a lot of visitors who just can’t be bothered to wait around. There are billions of pages on the Internet – to the average visitor, yours isn’t worth waiting for.
The other side of this coin hits straight at your pocket book – your Web host probably charges for bandwidth. The bigger your file is, the more bandwidth you use, and the more you have to pay to host your site.

If you hire a good Flash designer, they should be able to (and should be) dynamically loading images, movies and other rich content as it's required. This reduces up front load times for visitors, and reduces wasted bandwidth on your server.

If you follow these three simple rules, you will go a long way to improving the user experience for visitors to your site. I can't state strongly enough how far behind the eight ball you are when you post a Flash site - but these things will get you running towards making it a success.