Why "cute" animations could kill your traffic?
In the early years of the new millennium having a "flashy" all animated website seemed attractive. However, today an all-Flash built website is practically invisible both for search engines and Apple portable devices. Here is an excerpt from Steve Jobs’ candidly written open letter to Adobe in April 2010: "HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins like Flash." Although there was a lot of hype around Adobe’s promise to release a search engine friendly version of Flash a few years ago, it has not yet happened. While Flash still remains a great application, it is a major handicap for those who adopted it, even as an insert for large graphics on landing pages.
In addition to being ignored by search engines and Apple portables, Flash websites are difficult, if not impossible, to edit without costly programming services. Almost none of them have a content management system available for easy updating of the Flash websites. Basically, if you own an all-Flash website, you have a beautiful corpse floating on the web that nearly no one gets to visit and admire.
Image Factory creates websites with technologies that are all HTML5 compliant, yet we design vibrant pages that invite interaction and are compatible with all Apple products. We will quickly convert your Flash website into a lightweight, accessible, dynamic, scalable and easy-to-update website that will actually serve your SEO interests.
Why music on your webpage is not a sound idea?
Even before Flash became the rave, contrary to common sense, website owners thought it was a good idea to add music to their web pages. Back then, when “You’ve got mail!” and dial up were still common, visitors would have to agonize until huge sound files would download, only to be finally chased away by the same blaring musical passage playing over and over. It is hard to believe but, even now, many such websites have not been updated. Worse, even today some website owners “embellish” their online pages with such torturous sounds.
Broadband has radically diminished user patience. Even simple web pages that are not optimized for speedy display will lose visitors. Add to that large video files, heavy graphics, or large photo files. This is what Steve Lohr wrote in his March 1, 2012 New York Times Technology article “These days, even 400 milliseconds - literally the blink of an eye - is too long, as Google engineers have discovered” and "Two hundred fifty milliseconds, either slower or faster, is close to the magic number now for competitive advantage on the Web," said Harry Shum, a computer scientist and speed specialist at Microsoft. “Four out of five online users will click away if a video stalls while loading,” continues the article.
Image Factory fully understands the quest for online speed. When we revamp your website, not only do we design optimized pages carrying lightweight graphics and code, but our content management systems automatically convert large photo files into an optimal quality/size ratio at upload. This way, we ensure that your updates will always stay small and that your web pages will retain their original optimal loading speed when you assume control of your content.