I’m a customer. I have an emergency, you’re a plumber. My basement is flooding. I need someone right now. So I do a quick search, and your company’s link comes up. I click and even though I need a plumber right now, I don’t stay on your site because I can’t call you. You know why? Because your site has that stupid flash intro that loads slow on my computer, or its irritating, and it’s a waste of time. Sorry to put that so bluntly, but this is what your customer’s tell me when I do market research.

Nobody wants to see your intro! Sure you think it’s cool, and you got to the ooohhh’s and aaahhh’s from all your friends, or relatives, that will sit there and watch because they love you and care about the details of everything on your site, but hey I’m a customer and I don’t care. What I care about is finding the information or service that I want without being slowed down by waiting for something to load, or that is loud, or that is obnoxious, or that plays music and I’m at work so now its blasting as I scramble to turn down the music or click off your site and find a quieter business that I can sneak and call from my desk before my manager catches me.

Look at it this way, what if you were on your way to the local Wal-Mart. You want socks. You need the socks; you’re out and are meeting your bowling league. You forgot socks and don’t want the risk of germs in rented shoes. So you pull into Wal-Mart, but there’s a guy there outside the door. And he says, I sell plenty of socks, but you have to stand here and listen to me sing and dance before you can go inside and buy the socks that you know that I sell inside. You know what I’d do… go to Target.

This is how your potential customers feel. The average attention span of a human being is about 8 seconds. Do u want them to waste those precious seconds after they click on your site, waiting for it to load, or watching something they might not be interested in seeing. This is another example of knowing that your website does not belong to you. It is there to please your customers and to gain their business.

Another reason to not have flash is contrary to what you’ve heard: Flash and SEO DO NOT play well together. It’s just one of those things where the engines can’t read what is going on that well. It reads the actual text on the pages. So, all of the time, money and hard work you put into making your intro look spectacular will be a waste is no one can find your site on “The Google”.  Do you really only want to be seen by people that you gave your card to?  Yes, there are some cool intro’s but in this day and age, the majority of people have seen it all and furthermore, don’t care.

Here are 5 of the top reasons not to use a flash intro:

• Nobody Cares- Flash Made for Flash’s Sake – It seems like the only people really interested in a Flash intro is the one who made it and the one who bought it. Everyone else just wants to press the “skip intro” button. With Google analytics, you can see how long a person is actually on the page and trust me, I’ve broken plenty of hearts explaining to clients that people aren’t on the page long enough to watch that fabulous intro they insisted on.
• Search Engines Hate It – Can you read a movie? Well other than some French subtitle thingy. Which gets limited viewing, which in itself proves point 1. The search engine robots read your website. They want to see words, text, locations, and real data. Not a movie it can’t see.
• It’s Slow! – It’s not slow on your computer because you have high-speed Internet and your browser is caching a site that you’ve probably looked at a million times. But for someone who has slower speed, or if your webhost is slower, its murder and they won’t wait for you.
• Link Juice Still Suffers – Links help your website with search engines. Things like www.mysite.com/atlanta-air-conditioning get a lot of weight with search engines. If you don’t have links because you have the intro and the skip button embedded in the page, you’re wasting precious SEO points. Go ahead, and do a search for “Skip Intro”. You’ll see 1000′s of sites with just skip intro that search engines never knew what their site was about because the only thing they saw was “Skip Intro”
• Flash by Third Parties - It is usually made by third parties who created it so the intro can’t be easily changed. You will have to rehire and rehire and rehire the same company every time you want to change your Flash. Meaning, your content management system won’t work. You have to call, and pay your web designer every time you need a change. We love the business, but it’s great to help you save.

Don’t get me wrong, flash will always have a certain purpose for sites and can be very valuable for the WOW factor. Just remember how your money might be able to go towards better purposes first.