Were you following the Commonwealth games? Joshua Ross was the favourite in his race. Clearly he was the pretty boy. Guess who won the race? Marlon Devonish. What's the moral of the story? Looking good has nothing to do with performance. Flash is very much the same. It looks really good but there are some major disadvantages to having a Flash-reliant website. For the benefit of those who don't know what Flash is, it's an animation/movie tool that can make your website look pretty glitzy and glamorous.

However, the cons of Flash far outweigh the pros. These include but are not limited to:

(1) Search engine robots won't read them and don't index them. So if your website is heavy on Flash animations, you can forget about being found easily.

(2) Flash animations are not easy to create. So you'll be heavily dependent on your web site designer. Ironic but true, we don't encourage clients to be dependent on designers. We believe one of the keys to our high customer retention rate is our high customer satisfaction rate; and a trained client will always be able to update his/her website faster than any third party ever could. So although it means less money for us, we get more loyal customers. With a Flash-reliant website, you can bet you'll also be supplier-reliant and have to wait for whenever he/she gets around to your 'urgent' update.

(3) Flash costs more because it takes longer to build.

(4) Flash also takes longer to modify

(5) Flash can't be e-mailed easily because it uses some of the same execution-type technology as viruses. Most e-mail readers will therefore consider it 'dangerous' and not show it. So 'just e-mail the page to me' won't be words you'd like to hear from customers.

Now, don't get me wrong, we don't discourage Flash altogether. Some strategic, small use of Flash could be pleasing to the eye and visually guide visitors to take the action you want them to. Just don't put anything important in your Flash movie and make sure it is repeated somewhere else on your website albeit as plain text.

Whenever, I have to address the Flash story I always remember Global Crossing. Their website at first was totally Flash. It was very impressive but they seem to have realised impressiveness wasn't converting into sales. It was just cool, and cool alone doesn't bring profits unless you're in the party business. Now, their website looks a lot more sober and actually presents solutions clearly.