I was checking out what’s new at Wight Shopper yesterday when I noticed an offer from a company called CAD Delta. They are an Architectural Services company based in Newport, here on the Isle of Wight. The reason for my attention being brought to this particular company, is because it jogged my memory that a friend who was supposed to be writing their website had suddenly found out a little while ago that CAD Delta had now given the website design job to another company.
Wondering if they had done the website and curious as to who it was and what kind of job they might have made of the site, I popped over to the CAD Delta website to take a look! What I found was some flashy intro graphics which proceeded to complete its animation to reveal a full flash site. Now, Flash technology is great for certain multimedia applications and can create stunning things in the right hands, but full Flash websites for business…I’ve never been fond of that.
So, as content is my favourite topic and for any content to be useful it really needs to be findable by people, I decided to check-out what Google thinks of this Flash website. The image below is a screenshot of what Google can see when it looks at the CAD Delta website:
What this screenshot shows is that for the CAD Delta website, Google sees 5 pages. Based on the content that is actually ‘contained’ in the Flash site, CAD Delta have between 40-60 potential pages, ranging from information on their services, testimonials, case studies of projects and information about their company. On Google however, ony 2 results are relevant to their business, remaining 3 are complete gobbledegoop from Flash file settings that exist. Those 40-60 potential pages, would have given them a great chance of appearing in results for searches such as ‘Isle of Wight Architects’, ‘Isle of Wight Surveyor’, ‘Isle of Wight Building Plans’, ‘Isle of Wight Extension’, ‘Isle of Wight Building Advice’ etc etc.
Flash sites do look good there is no disputing that, and having one is fine if the client knows what they are getting and that is what they want. Now, I have no idea whether CAD Delta were made aware of this issue before they agreed to having a pure Flash site, but if you are thinking about having a website built and want the information you publish to be found by people who might be searching for relevant topics on the Internet then consider the situation of CAD Delta and ask yourself this question:
Do I want Internet users to find my website when they are typing in searches related to the services and information I will be putting serious effort into putting on my website?
If the answer if yes, then you need to take seriously the technologies that are used to create your website and discuss the pro’s and con’s of each proposal your website developer makes.