Estate Agent flashed by website

 

There are some shocking Estate Agent web design and overall websites out in the wilderness of the internet. One of the biggest web design crimes is to build an Estate Agent website entirely out of a design technique called flash.

‘Flash’ or ‘Adobe Flash’ was designed by the Adobe Systems and introduced as early as 1996. Flash is now in its tenth version with Adobe Flash Professional CS5 released last year. There has been some controversy over flash with a few alternatives emerging including HTML5, Microsoft Silverlight, Java and other alternatives.

Flash does have its uses, but there are plenty of reasons why Estate Agents shouldn’t allow their website to be built entirely out of flash:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) – For one, Google who have a 92% market share within the UK, aren’t particularly fond of flash. The software used to scan the internet can’t read most of flash and therefore Google cannot provide a complete picture of search results.
• Upgrading – Not everyone has the latest version of flash and when asked to upgrade just to visit a website, most people will just press the back button and simply visit a competitor’s website.
• Slow – Flash slows down the website and Google doesn’t want to provide websites which makes users sit around – people will just move onto another search engine. Therefore they have included website speed as a ranking factor in its SEO.
• Mobile – Most mobiles simply do not cater for flash. The smart phones with the biggest market share, the iPhone and Blackberry do not allow the use of flash. By building an Estate Agent website entirely out of flash you are stopping mobile users from accessing that website.

On the other hand, Flash can be good if you use it for the right things, such as animations welcoming users to the website, but not completely over taking the Estate Agent website.

James Coyne – eMarketing and Social Media Consultant