Forum Moderators: phranque
More than 50% of users with flash plugin prefer to visit a HMTL version of a site if they can choose between flash and HTML. - I guess it was a short report about some study.
Somebody's seen a statement like this anywhere?
And what do you guess about flash acceptance?
For me as a user it seems obvious to prefer a non-flash version visiting a site ... only if there's a clear benefit of a flash animation I would click on it. But before that I want plain vanilla HTML to tell me what's the site about, and where I can find what I'm looking for.
I really hate when it says ‘click here to skip flash’ and it still downloads the entire Flash thing before letting me move on.
GOOD 100% flash sites are so hard to find... you end up getting a site which is just annoying to use...
I do think, however, that menus, small adverts, ect are great uses... or even using them as small applets so you dont have to go through 4 or 5 pages to get the info you want...
My biggest beef with flash is it usually takes away my freedoms of saving images, copying text, etc.
Just my 2 cents... Canadian cents... so only like .7 American cents :P
But does somebody have some facts or founded conjectures related to my question?
But I would really like to have some hints concerning acceptance of flash compared to HTML if both are available to visit a site.
A client of mine is so enamored of Flash ... and so I would like to have some figures to make him think.
I hope some of you have figures?
BTW I think I know most of the arguments pro and con use of flash.
Help would be appreciated, thanks.
Just explain to them that FLASH can't be read by SE's and then do a KW search on all major SE's and see how many on the 1st page are total flash sites.
If they insist on flash, well, they are the customer and they are always right, even when they are wrong. The only way you may be able to prove this to them is to do it their way 1st. As you put together the site, just keep this in mind and try to design the site so that if you have to change it HTML, redesign won't be so hard.
Can't you sniff for flash and run flash if found and if not found use like normal HTML? If so, then after a few months you will have your own stats on it. I know of no stats that exist on this, although they could exist somewhere. But in the business of statistics, you run into a problem of bias. This is documented in every stats book I have read, about 10, so getting stats from someone else may exhibit this problem anyway, one way or the other, thus making it useless.
well, they are the customer
Yaah.
FLASH can't be read by SE's
To bypass that they like to have a HTML homepage with all SE stuff, but starting Flash site if plugin available.
sniff for flash ...
Yeah, I can do that (but they are not really willing to pay me for building two sites, because they're positive that nearly everybody has flash ...).
So my ulterior motive was to let users decide to see how many would choose flash or HTML.
That's why I started this topic.
I'm quite sure somebody else has done this before and has some figures.
@kwngian: For the most part I agree to your opinion (even if PDF and Flash can have benefits under certain circumstances: demand for good printing quality; animation of complex machines aso).
But how do you argue (supposed you're doing a living by making websites for customers)?
To bypass that they like to have a HTML homepage with all SE stuff, but starting Flash site if plugin available.
And if it's not, force them to wait to DL flash?
And then what happens if the end users machine is flaky, and the system registry is just waiting for one more install to blow up and that DL does it?
I agree with you. Either 2 sites or not, and if not, no flash.
Ecommerce = HTML
Eye candy = Flash
The customers is not always right in the case of SEO "most" people dont know what works so you have to tell them.
A lot of ppl don’t know how important it is.
you're absolutely right ... wish I could communicate that to my clients stringent enough.
<bullheaded question:>no figures available, actually?</bullheaded question>
A egg head with a degree that has no real experience making money with websites says "It looks cool and Flash is the wave of the future."
A client that has 2000.00 dollars to have a basic site says "Hey thats a good idea. After all the internet is a cool place to do business."
Egg head "Well the site will take 1 month to build and get the bugs out."
Dumb Client "OK sounds good to me I will tell my boss that you are doing it for us."
Egg head "Talk to you later."
Neither know nothing about the internet and when the site gets built the client says well how do I show up in the search engines. The Egg head says you have to go to www.somedumbguyspammer.com and he spams the site out and gets him listed in 200,000 search engines. Then I get a call asking if I can do anything for their site. Actually it gets handed to me for a site evaluation and then I make contact.
SEO with experience (me) "If you are looking to sell your product you need to change your site."
Client; "I spent 2000.00 to have it built 4 months ago and I dont want to spend any more money on the site."
ME; "Well there are a few things we can do, but they are temporary and will not be true listings for your site."
Client; "Go ahead and do it."
Then I work my magic and they get listings and then I get a call asking why their site is not showing up in all the engines under all the search engines.
ME; "Because your site cant be read by the current search engines."
Client; "How do I fix it."
ME; "Get a site that is HTML."
Client; "I am not willing to do that."
ME; "Then YOUR site will not get listed."
Then the customer gets crappie and wants to get out of the contract or wants me to build them a site that will get listings.
So the bottom line is this. If you want to sell a product use HTML.
If you want to have a cool new fangangled site that is not intended for selling a product use Flash.
Many customer are difficult. If I was in your shoes I would explain it to them from a finacial point of view and also bring up the slowness of the flash on a dial up connection.
If you want more info sticky me.
This might help you a bit
A site of mine used flash, animated gifs and regular text links for banner ads. I measured the click through for each:
Click throughs for the animated gifs was about 10-15% greater than the flash. Click throughs for the plain text ads was about was up to 50% better than the animated gifs.
The site in question concerned off-line traditional auctions.
tim
As Yogi Bera said, ‘that’s like déjà vu all over again’
Jakob Nielsen explores Flash (un)usablity in these articles [useit.mondosearch.com].
Vincent Flanders of Web Pages That Suck [webpagesthatsuck.com] ("Where you learn good design by looking at bad design") regularly slams Flash sites. It's hard (tho not impossible) to implement Flash well.
I have seen a handful of good uses of Flash on the web, but most stink.
@miles: how did you know my client? ;)
@totter: that's great. I guess your click through figures are typical. Anybody similar experiences?
@wilma: I did know Nielsen and Flanders before, but thanks anyway.
