Web Marketing Therapy

Ask the Marketing Therapist – is Flash Trash??

March 4th, 2009
by Lorrie Thomas

I received a great “Ask the Marketing Therapist” question today! Keep reading to get your marketing-savvy thinking caps on! Thank you all for your inquiries, keep posting them on the Web Marketing Therapy Blog or contact us on WebMarketingTherapy.com!

Q. My office is having a rather heated debate over how to optimize a website that’s built entirely in flash. Do you have any insights to this? I’ve always heard that a site needs to be in HTML because spiders can’t see past the home page of an all-flash site. Any thoughts are appreciated.
-Marketer Seeking Search Savvy (MSSS)

THE MARKETING THERAPIST’S COMMENTARY (WHICH WILL LEAD TO HER ANSWER):
Thanks for writing MSSS and great question. I’m glad you reached out for some web marketing advice. If you were live on my couch, we’d be having a healthy discussion about the purpose of the website, WHY you want to optimize it, we’d look at the current state of search visibility and look at who the target market is, THEN we’d start to carve out the “coulds” to optimize the site. Based on your questions phrasing above, it sounds to me like your desire to “optimize” relates to getting found better in the natural search results. It is important to clarify what a web owner means by “optimize” (and why?) as there are many meanings of “optimize”. I look at the definition of optimization in several ways:

-Credibility
Is your site professional, powerful and does it position your organization to attract who you want?

-Usability
If people cannot use your website, they won’t….fashion needs to meet function with the web! Does your website serve, support customers and funnel people to take appropriate action?

-Visibility
Can people find you online? HOW? Visibility can be done a number of ways – multi-channel approaches are where you win BIG. Visibility channels can include natural search, paid search, email marketing, affiliate marketing, online pr, content distribution, social media, strategic partnerships, traditional advertising, online advertising and much, much more!

-Sell-ability
How well does your website sell your products and services? Credibility, Usability and Visibility all work together to boost the SELLability of your web marketing. People need to know, like and trust you and marketing is all about the right messaging, value proposition, and experience.

A. Sooooo, to answer your question:
“I heard that a site needs to be in HTML because spiders can’t see past the home page of all-flash sites” …..
There are a number of ways to look at the solution:

1. Flash can be Trash. It is a fact that search engines have a more difficult time reading flash sites. Search engines index websites by sending out spiders…spiders read content, HTML code, links….the list of what makes these algorhythms is extensive. Ultimately, spiders eat what is easy to eat and plain ol’ HTML text is easier to eat then a Flash site…….

BUT……
2. If you read my commentary above, there are a lot of ways to skin the “optimization” cat. At Web Marketing Therapy, we believe in building websites for end users FIRST and search engines second.

3. I suggest you go back to the purpose of the WHOLE web marketing enchilada. Ask your team if the Flash site currently works…is it credible, user-friendly and does it sell? Have you looked at your web statistics to see what drives converting traffic to the website? Before you de-flash a site in the name of attracting search engines, you need to look at the arial view…the big picture. Who is the target audience, does flash serve them well? Can you compromise and optimize meta title tags and have a combo flash/html site to keep fashion and search optimization function strong? (I RARELY see all flash sites anymore)

The answer to your marketing success is within you and I am glad to hear your team is debating healthily. That means there is passion….NOW FIND YOUR PURPOSE.

My final answer – it all depends on the site purpose, goals and making decisions based on options.

STRATEGY FIRST, EXECUTION SECOND!

Hope this helps!

Warm Regards,

–The Marketing Therapist