A Marketer’s Introduction to Flash Animation

Flash animation is a pretty popular web design element these days, but most marketers still don’t recognize its full potential. In fact, if you’re like most people, you probably just associate it with the all too frequently used (and incredibly annoying) Flash “splash” page—the introductory page that prevents you from immediately getting to a website’s home page.

But Flash—like most things—can be used for good or evil.

Flash Brings Your Page to Life.  
One of the things that separates the Internet from print is the ability to have motion graphics. This same thing can help separate your site from your competition’s. It may sound cliché, but when done properly, a Flash animation can truly bring your page to life. Does your company build beautiful things? Does your restaurant have a one-of-a-kind atmosphere? If your company or organization does something much better than others, why not highlight that facet of your business with a Flash animation?

But Won’t People Need Special Players to View My Site? 
Five years ago, it was hard to convince a client to use Flash. It was a “new technology”, and not many people were able to view Flash. Latest versions were always required for download, and most people wouldn’t bother. Nowadays, though, Flash is used on virtually all the most trafficked sites on the Web—and for you that means that anyone that comes to your site is likely to already have been to a site which uses Flash and downloaded the necessary technology. In fact, Adobe’s latest stats tell us that over 98% of Internet users have at least Flash 6 installed on their systems. 

Flash Can Be Updated
Did you know that your Flash animation doesn’t have to be static-for-life, or static-until-you-ask-your-web-designer-to-update-it? With script, Flash can now pull images and text externally from your server. This means that you can effectively update your animations with fresh content whenever you want…in a Flash (yes, we did just go there.)

To learn more about how to enhance your site with Flash, contact your local TruePresence consultant.
 

Tags: Flash, web design