The marketing activity we all hope for; the free, powerful word of mouth referral to our website is severely hampered by Flash based website. The monolithic nature of Flash websites prevent anyone directing a contact into a specific part of your website. So they take a screen capture to show what they find interesting, or try to give some maze like instructions on how to find it in your website … or likely they just skip the whole thing and go on to a potential competitor. And you are left wanting for website referrals. You can’t buy word-of-mouth and with Flash you almost prevent them.
This is one marketing problem with Flash website I had not thought of before I came across this post at Webby Thoughts discussing the difficulty of emailing a link about Taco Bell’s Queso Crunchwrap with the Bell’s Flash website.
Now that may seem like it has little relevance to a wedding professional’s website, but imagine; a bride-to-be wanting to email a link to -
- show her bride’s maids the dress she wants them to wear/buy
- show her planner the floral decorations she wants to use
- share the images that made her decide to chose you as her photographer
- or worse, the link to your contract and payment options with her parents.
With Flash most of your content and details are buried in single monolithic site, it can’t be done. And as you build content it only becomes more difficult to share “word-of-mouth” referrals about what she found important about you. Put your content into a great platform like my WordPress based Kertesz web/blogsite and keep Flash for your galleries. So don’t just want referrals, GET them!
Think about it, can anyone name a successful internet marketer using a totally Flash based website … Bueller?
