I was very interested in reading Justin’s responses to Armando’s questions but was ultimately let down in that Justin answers questions like a politician: without an ounce of substance.
The problem with Flash is that in its current state it requires a site to double the code/content (HTML + XML) in order to serve appropriate content to all viewers. Armando asked how Flash works with Screen Readers and Search engines and the answer was the same: [We have API calls available for those technologies, it’s up to them to use them]. This tells me the Flash team doesn’t understand the problem nor are they willing to be a part of the solution, only shift the blame if said site doesn’t perform the way it’s supposed to.
What is Flash supposed to do? Flash needs to be able to sit on top of a functional (consumable by all media, data driven, visual or auditorial) metadata content layer: HTML. Why you ask? It’s the only method of data delivery that is consumable by all things “web.” Having the content in a central location gives two massive benefits that I have yet to see the Flash community answer with any semblance of assurance: How do you (the consumer) determine which content is more important Flash+XML or HTML? Search engines (the single largest internet consumers) and if you have a screen reader would read BOTH and divide the value of the data between both sources. Search rankings suffer as the value associated with a site is divided equally between the two sources of information and screen readers end up having to dive into and duplicate content to the listener. Neither is an answer to the problem and in my opinion creates more problems than we had before. We’ve already see Flash/HTML site solutions drop in SERPs due to the Link Juice be divided between the two links (one flash, the other html). Rand Fishkin pointed this out in both the new book and his article referenced by Armando.
Flash should act as a substitute for CSS/Javascript and happily sit above the HTML. What Armando should have asked Justin is “Why is this so hard to achieve and what is Flash (Adobe) doing to help internet consumers simplify their data consumption?” And the answer is Flash is trying to create its own “browser”: Air. Why? Another good question for Armando but I believe they see the writing on the wall: Flash is a dying solution to rich multimedia on the web. They’re focusing their efforts on creating a new delivery method. Maybe the right move? Maybe not, only time will tell. Personally I’d like to see them embrace their role as a substitute for CSS/Javascript and push rich web multimedia by providing lightweight fast answers for questions CSS/Javascript can’t answer across all browsers. But what do I know…
I currently have one Air app (Tweetdeck) installed on my computer and it takes up almost as much memory as my browser does with 20 tabs open. Yes, that’s around 250mb of RAM to get… 140 characters of text. Delivery method outlook? Not great.
I’ll preface by saying this is something I sent around in an email within work acouple years back so it was never formatted for the web. I have recently neededto reference it when talking to a few clients so I’ve put it up here for othersas well. I will come back and format it better later on but for now this will haveto do. I’ll also continue to update it and add new links as I see fit.
- Websites shouldn’t ever disable the back button (Flash/AJAX/Frames)
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- Summary
- Since 60% of users employ the back button as a primary means of navigation, disablingit can prevent 60% of your users from finding information they want or frustratingthem into not using your website.
- Flash, Frames and AJAX havethe potential to disable users back buttons (the 2nd most used feature on the webnext to clicking on links)
- AJAX is technology that allows for the website to effectively refresh and shownew content without actually refreshing the entire page
- Flash is compiled code run by a plugin called appropriately: Flash. The entireflash object needs to be loaded before it can be viewed and used. Flash can be usedto create an entire video game to something as simple as making a picture fade inand out on the screen.
- Frames are a form of coding a website so that parts of the website are loadedin “frames” like windows in a house.
- Both Flash and Ajax should be served by the website’s content and not the otherway around. Meaning Flash and Ajax should not serve main content. An easy way totell if this is occurring properly is to look up at the URL bar of your browserand if you expect to be able to copy/paste that link to someone and have them seethe page you’re looking at then the page is working properly. If you copy and pastethat link and then when clicked on, it takes you to a different page than what you’relooking at, AJAX/Flash is operating incorrectly.
- Example: maps.google.com
- If you navigate to a location on maps.google.com and then copy the link in theurl to someone, they will not see the location you have navigated too. This is anincorrect implementation of AJAX. Google tried to solve this problem by providinga link on the page that you should copy and paste to a friend, but in my opinionthat doesn’t solve the problem correctly.
- Employing these methods also disables the ability to bookmark a site
- Printing the webpage can have problems
- Search engine’s don’t crawl the content properly or won’t find it — this is killingour client’s pageranks
- Scrolling vs Above the fold or 4:3 aspect ratio
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- Sites should embrace the medium they are using to present material. Web pagesscroll, don’t fight the medium — don’t fear the fold
- Flash should not be used as a content delivery tool as it can’t scroll with thebrowser and in turn fights the medium and instead tries to redefine what a web pageis. We should not be doing this.
- While hard to show fonts properly, what are you telling your user when you don’tallow the browser to search that font, and aren’t allowing them to change the sizeetc. Again, this is NOT what a web page is.
- Websites are viewed in F shaped patterns
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- Most websites should follow an F shaped reading pattern to better match what usersare used to seeing/reading content and using a website
- Exhaustive reading hardly ever occurs so if the information is important makesure it’s condensed and located at the top of the page.
- Make sure headings are used correctly and properly display the information youwant addressed
- Don’t piss off your users
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- Make sure you provide the information users are looking for behind navigationthat makes sense.
- Don’t make your users sit through intro movies, or click past intro pages in orderto get to the content they came to your site to see.
- Homepages should act as portals into the content the website has to offer, displayingthe most important and often used at the forefront.
- Flash is usually bad, it has very poor usability, doesn’t play well with searchengines and makes the over all user experience frustrating if implemented incorrectly.There are ways to implement it correctly, but these are usually very cost/time inefficient.
- Information Architecture
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- Websites should strive to have as much information accessible to users in theleast amount of clicks possible
- This can be achieved with clear and concise navigation, well organized content,and an easy to use interface
- Usually a large multi million dollar website will go through a few months of IAwork before it even gets to design. Wire frames will be made, all the informationwill be organized thoroughly and tests are run on individuals to see how fast theycan find information. The wire frames are tuned and eventually released to designfor compositions to be made for the end website.
- It should also be noted that Intro Pages and Flash movies put in front of contentis a bit no-no because of the findings of Information Architecture. Meaning youdon’t want to frustrate the user by making them click more times than they needto in order to get to the content they want to see.
- Search Engine Optimization
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- Search engines see websites only as the raw code; this means they can’t “read”the text on images, flash modules, or any type of included file format. They ONLYread raw HTML text.
- Search Engine Optimization is in itself its own beast, meaning making a websitecontinue to rank well in search engines requires a constant attention to the websitein keywords and content structure as well as marketing. It’s not something thatcan occur overnight or only once. It’s a very time intensive and expensive endeavor.
- Site ranking occurs from 3 main areas:
- Number of other quality sites linking to content on your site
- Amount of relevant content on your site
- meaning content that matches or has something to do with the keywords on yoursite as well as the links on your site
- Good Code – Keywords, Clean Content (no content in flash/active x) and Valid HTMLmarkup on your site
- Make sure you don’t try and cheat search engines – they will ban your site/blacklist it and then there’s pretty much no coming back after that
Users form an opinion about the website in 1/20th of a second
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- Users will decide if they like the website or not, and if they do like it, theywill give excuses for bad content
- If they hate it, they will leave the site and never come back.
- It’s extremely hard (impossible?) to earn a users trust back once they’ve decidedthey don’t like the look/feel of the website
- USERS LIKE TO BE RIGHT
- if they think you’re site is ugly/bad/untrustworthy, they will not even wastea whole second on the site
- if they like the site, they will make excuses as to why the content isn’t good,or why certain things won’t function exactly right
Website Credibility is directly relational to your design not your content
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- Building website creditability will make your users trust your information, fillout forms, and return for more information
- The best way to build website creditability is through visual appeal and organized navigation, not content. Examples: layout, typography, font size, color schemes (http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/dynamic/web-credibility-reports-evaluate-abstract.cfm )
- Losing creditability will make users leave your website and thus not fill outforms
- Experts in the area the website focuses on are much more interested in the content,where as people who are not experts (your average user) are much more willing totrust a website based on looks alone.
- Due to the rising threat of identity theft, users will only fill out forms ofwebsites they TRULY trust and will only fill out fields that pertain to the overallgoal of the form.
- After all, if they’re seeking information, sometimes it’s easier for a user togo back to the search engine and find information that doesn’t require them to fillout a form and wait and or not even get information they want.
- The majority of web users HATE being spammed, and anything that requires an emailaddress, phone number or some other form of contact information scares them andthey will seek immediate information elsewhere unless they’ve exhausted every otherresource.
Consumer Investigations
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- Includes articles: “Home Buyer Beware”, “Take the Money and Run: fake online escrowservices”
- Users are already weary of real estate/mortgage forms as emails regarding mortgageinformation is the second most received type of spam mail.
Make forms user friendly
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- Don’t ask for information that the user doesn’t have readily at their fingertips
- Ask for the absolutely MINIMUM amount of information possible, no one likes tospend a ton of time filling out forms, and there’s plenty of websites on the web,one of them will most likely have a much easier to use form
- Don’t force a user to input data in a format they don’t know. Make sure to tellthem (example: phone numbers ###-###-####)
- Don’t give cryptic error messages
- Always tell the user where they are in the process. If they have to fill out aform, make sure they know very well what will happen after they fill it out (willthere be another one? Will they get an email? Will they be added to an emailinglist?)
Top 10 mistakes on the web in 2005
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- #7 Cumbersome forms – Forms are used too often but if you have to use them, makethem short and easy to use
I recently saw your link over on Keith Byrd’s San Luis Obispo Real Estate website. I actually tried one of your pizza’s recently and was quite impressed. It was very good and although a bit more expensive than I’d like for a pizza different enough to warrant me buying a second one sometime soon. However this isn’t about your food, it’s about your website.I’d like to make you aware of some issues with an all Flash (that’s the animation and multimedia technology used to deliver your current website) website:
- Having to “load” your website. Since the website is done entirely in Flash, I have to wait for the content to load. This is bad. Most users have a very brief attention span an making them wait for information they could just as easily get from another Mediterranean restaurant’s website is not a good idea. I’m on a pretty fast DSL connection and it took me about 40 seconds to load. As a website you have about 1/20th of a second to impress someone with your design, and about 4 seconds max for their attention span. That means that more than likely no one will ever wait for your website to load and will most likely go somewhere else to find the information they’re looking for.
- Playing music in the background while relaxing in a restaurant is not kosher on a website. Let me explain why. As a potential customer on my computer I have probably found your website either by a referral (like Keith, me or Yelp) or by typing in your web address (petraslo.com). I likely have the ability to listen to my own music and for the sake of this example we’ll say it’s Andy McKee (because it is at the moment). I’m listening to my music, bobbing my head and enjoying it thoroughly… Until I come to your website. My once melodic and relaxing Andy McKee has now been mixed inadvertently and without my permission with your background music embedded in Flash. I’m surprised, confused and a bit frustrated and now scrambling to either turn off my music (something I’m not happy about doing) or trying to figure out where this new music is coming from. I realize it’s coming from your website and immediately am a bit irked that someone would force their music on me. I finally find the pause button on the website and stop your music. I might even do one of the following things: close the website and vow never to eat at your store again, be mildly ticked and still search for your phone number or address, or if you’re lucky I didn’t have any music playing and I enjoy your music and happily browse your menu and order something. I’d like to ask you as a business owner: Is it worth the first two scenario’s to have a few of the third?
- Not being able to link to your menu. Since the website is done in Flash and does not utilize HTML to link to different pages I cannot (and neither can search engines) link to any of your interior pages. Nor can they most likely read any of them. If I want to send my friend the menu page, or your contact information my friend will need to sit through your flash introduction and then I’ll talk them through which buttons to click and how to turn off your music before they can get to the information I want to share with them. Not good business. It should be very easy and second nature for me to use and share your website, not painful. This is also true for search engines.
- Minimal search engine indexing. Flash isn’t as easily indexed as HTML and is much harder to optimize for search engines thus as a web site built entirely in Flash you aren’t as visible or highly ranked as you probably should be. Being found in search engines is like free business referrals, why are you making this more difficult for yourself?
- Not playing well with browsers. This might sound odd but Flash is not inherently installed on browsers and isn’t supported by them as standard HTML is. An example will probably clear this up a bit: Try right clicking on this page. You’ll get your standard right click menu from a website including possibly the options to go back, view source, copy, paste, etc. This is what you expect, right? Try right clicking on any Flash website. You will not be prompted to copy or paste, or go back, or anything else you are used too. Instead you can most likely “play” or “loop”. This is because your website is essentially one big movie that has hot spots that can be clicked on to play other “movies”. It’s not content, it’s a movie. Do you play your menu’s as movies for customers when they come into your store? Probably not because it would be frustrating for them to pause, rewind or wait to read the menu or point out things to their friends. It would also be very expensive to “print” them to put in your shop. So why do it on the web?
- The back button is now broken. Yes, your website has effectively broken my back button on my browser. If I click on any menu item and then hit the back button I actually leave your website. Not a good thing.
It’s in your best interest to make things very simple and easy for your users and give them exactly what they want from a restaurant website: A menu, a phone number, an address and possibly a nice logo and easy to read text. You don’t really need anything else. If you have any questions give me a call or better yet contact your web designer and get this all sorted out. Ask for a simple one page informational website. It will help your business rather than hurt it. You’ll thank me later.
And stop torturing your customers! I know you’re one of the most personable restaurants I’ve ever had the joy of eating in, that should show up in spades through your website too.
