“Flash intro”, better then show the owner what they’ve
known by its infamous made. He looks it over, and then
“skip-intro” name, is a bad decides it “lacks oomph”. The
web design technique that should site could be perfect in every
be banned like asbestos. way. It could be easy to use and
a selling machine, but the owner
What Is It?: An animation is convinced that in order to
accompanied by music that is at sell his products, he must
least thirty seconds to two “excite” his audience.
minutes long – and the first web
page shown before “entering” a The all-too-familiar skip-intro
web site. then rears its ugly head. Out of
desperation, the designers will
The only reason anyone ever uses make one. The owner loves it and
a skip-intro page is because they immediately gives the green
think it’s “cool”. There is light.
absolutely nothing good about
skip-intro web pages. For small business owners, the
same situation occurs. They feel
Here’s how a skip-intro page (or have been fooled into
usually happens: believing) that a skip-intro page
is “cool”, when in fact they’re
A business owner (or even a not thinking about the customer
large-scale company) wants a web at all.
site. So they hire a web designer
or a web design team. The owner The key thing to remember is
knows absolutely nothing about this: If your intent is to run a
web design or usability (more on business from a web site, don’t
that in a moment). So the design think about yourself. Think about
people put together a site and the customer. You want to make it
as easy as possible for them to
visit, browse and most 100% flash-based intros severely
importantly BUY whatever it is decrease the search engine
you’re selling. friendliness of your web site. If
your opening web page has
Major flaws with absolutely no text to enter the
skip-intros site with, the search engines
will never “crawl” your site. Any
Sure, the skip-intro looks hopes you ever had of getting a
“cool”, but only once. Every time good “rank” are gone. Search
after that it’s an annoyance – engines read text, not Flash.
and not just for you, but for
every single customer and The answer is “no”.
potential customer that visits
your web site. Think of it this The answer to the question of
way: If you had a catalog that whether you should use a
forced you to wait two minutes skip-intro Flash page or not is
before opening it every time you no. If you intend to sell things,
wanted to, would you even bother? that skip-into page will do
Of course you wouldn’t. You’d go nothing but work against you.
get a normal catalog from someone
else!
About the Author:
David Risley is Founder/CEO of PC Media. PC Media specializes in creating web properties which achieve the aims of your business. Offering design and development, with services in web multimedia, video and e-commerce. Creator of Miraserver, a powerful CMS.
Read more articles by:
David Risley
Article Source: www.iSnare.com 
