Flash is a cool thing for people that first time they see it but after that it can get very annoying which is why a lot of people just tend to scrap it now. Once this initial “wow” factor has gone through you will start to see users dropping off like flies and this is because there are many problems when it comes to using flash.

99.9% of the time flash will give you very poor usability disease. There are some good designs of flash and it has to be said that when it is done right it looks simply fantastic but most of the time they are just awful websites.

So why does flash degrade websites?

Encourages Design Abuse

Breaks Fundamental Interaction Principles

Directs Attention For The Site’s Value

One of the big mistakes that people make when thinking about having their site designed is that they think flash animation is going to attract people to the site. Of course it will be a success if you have the budget but this is not likely as a decent looking flash site is going to cost you possible thousands upon thousands.

Of ocurse one of the other problems is time, it takes a long time to design a site like this. It will take a very long time to get the animation together and this is simply for the home page, imagine if you wanted the entire site to be flash?

A small bit of flash on the site can be very useful indeed and look brilliant but I would never say to go too far with it as it just takes too long to load.

If you are struggling to realise just how you want your site designed then I suggest getting a decent web design team involved.

Of course if you have a site and it isn’t doing well you could bring in the SEO team.

There are so many sites out there that are simply just not up to scratch and need a bit of a mess around with before they are capable of actually keeping up with their competitors which is of course where web design come into it all.

What Are The Major Signs That Your Site Needs Work Done To It?

Flashy?

If your site is flash based then I know for a fact that you are in a need of an update which is why you need those designers. When flash first came into play it was very popular indeed but nowadays it is almost as if people are fighting not to have flash on their website. Why does this happen? Well the main reason is that it just takes such a long period of time to load up and people are just not willing to wait for this to happen.

Broken Links?

If you have many broken links across the site it is going to be very hard for people to actually navigate to the pages that they need to go through. If this is proving to be a problem to a visitor to the site then you know what they are going to be dong right? The will look at the site and leave and just go elsewhere.

This brings me nicely on to my final point.

Navigation

If you have a site that just doesn’t make sense then you need to sort it because you will be losing potential customers from it. This is because there are so many competitors around for each kind of business that they can just go elsewhere if they wanted to.

If you think that your site is optimised to the best that it can be but you are still not getting anywhere when it comes to Google why not try some SEO. This will help you rank for the terms relative to your business and drive traffic into the site.

In the cut and thrust, ever competitive market that is web design, there is always a good deal to be had. This is especially the case in the current financial climate as the recession has meant that many people are “tightening their belts” so to speak. The web design service industry has felt the full force of the credit crunch in the same way that many other business sectors have. As a consumer you can turn this to your own advantage by ensuring that as well as having a website designed and built that you also have six months of web promotion thrown in for free.

Now I am not a web designer; I actually run stuttering treatment speech courses here in the UK and I also help people by offering a DVD authoring service.

Now there may be a number of you; the readers of this article, that believe that to request a free website promotion service to go with the web design is some what cheeky. I would have to agree with you however it has to be worth a go – we are in a recession after all.

It is similar to when you a buy a car, this is something that my father did recently. Now we have all hard about the problems in the car markets; the demise of General Motors being a prime example. My dad decided to make the most of their woes and went about securing himself a great deal. He knew the car he wanted and stated that he was only willing to pay a certain price, a price which was well below the car dealer’s asking price. He went around a number of car garages and put in his offer, eight of the dealerships turned down his offer but the ninth accepted it.

What I am saying is that when you make these requests a lot of web designers will turn you down but there will be at least one that will accept. It is important to ensure however that the person who accepts to build you a website and is happy to throw in a web promotion service for free is capable of producing the goods and isn’t just some fly by night novice.