From time to time Blue Ember Design gets requests to have sites built in Flash.  Here are 7 good reasons why that might be a bad idea:

1. Bandwidth Intensive – Files associated with Flash websites are typically very large files.  The more intricate the animations, the larger the file.  What if your visitor is still using a dial-up Internet connection (7% of Americans still do)?  Some designers use loading pages, but who wants to wait?  That leads us to the next point.
2. Wasting Visitor’s Time – A website has seconds to capture a visitor’s attention.  Every second spent loading is a second lost.  If a visitor wants to buy something from an online store, do they want to wait through an intro video first?
3. CPU Intensive – On top of being bandwidth intensive, Flash can be CPU intensive.  Flash websites run on the visitor’s computer and use its graphics card for animation.  Not all computers are fast enough to handle Flash websites.
4. Limited Usability – Functionality of a website built in Flash is often not as expected (or desired).  Examples:
   • The “Back” button doesn’t work as expected because the entire site is one multimedia video.  The only way to go back is to use the navigation (hopefully) built into the Flash file.
   • Most modern browsers have the ability to make the text on a page larger or smaller.  Flash can’t react to this browser functionality; making it difficult for those with vision impairment to use the website.
   • Searching for text within a page is impossible.  Any text on the page is a part of the video and therefore inaccessible to the browser’s search feature.
5. Requires a Browser Plug-In – Flash requires a browser plug-in to be displayed.  Most browsers support a Flash plug-in provided by Adobe, but good web etiquette says there should be a fallback if the visitor does not.  What is the fallback?  A traditional website that uses HTML to display pages.  The alternative is to tell the visitor they need to download the plug-in.  Remember when we talked about wasting visitor’s time above?
6. Limited Search Engine Visibility – Google has made advancements in the ability to index the content of Flash files, but it’s far from perfect.  The goal of any website that hopes to have good Google rankings should be to make it’s important content easily and readily available to search engine spiders.  Flash doesn’t come even close to offering this.
7. Development Costs – The number of highly skilled Flash developers is significantly lower than the number of traditional web designers.  This fact gives them the green light to charge higher prices.  Be prepared to pay a higher rate for the creation of the website as well as any following updates or additions.