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Hi everyone,
I have a few questions about Flash. How widely accepted is it? Would you say that over 90% of internet users have it installed on their computers? If a person goes to a website and is prompted to download Flash in order to view the site correctly, what happens if they refuse to download it? Does the page work at all? Or does the page load up fine and leave a blank space where the flash material is supposed to be?
I should note that I’m referring mainly to flash banners embedded in normal HTML. I’m not referring to flash navigation, or to entire sites designed with Flash. From an SEO standpoint, I think it’s better to use traditional HTML for those sorts of things.
Personally I think the Flash banners are more attractive than the animated gifs, but I’m not sure if putting these banners on my site would have a negative effect or a positive effect. If there is a huge chunk of people who can’t (or won’t) view a site because it contains Flash, then I should stick with traditional animated gifs. On the other hand, if animated flash banners result in more clicks compared to animated gif banners, then I’d want to use some of these flash banners on my site (but only if the increase in clicks offsets the potential losses I might suffer by having flash on the site at all).
What do you guys think?
Does anyone have data they can share with respect to the number of clicks on a flash banner compared to the number of clicks on an animated gif banner? Has anyone done an experiment with this sort of thing? If so, can you share some percentages here, for example, “with the flash banner, the number of clicks increased by 25%,” or something to that effect. And if the number of clicks increased, did that also translate to better conversions at the casino, or did the conversion rate remain the same?
Thanks in advance.
Good question Engineer!
I personally think that Flash Banners are more attractive also and do use them at my sites for several casinos. For me they perform as well as regular animated .gifs.
I dont think there is a significant portion of the public who DONT have flash support on their PCs, but I will let our resident SEO experts provide feedback on that.
Thanks Professor.
I think I’ll integrate a few Flash banners into my site when I have time. If the vast majority of people have Flash supported on their computers, then I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t use it. Granted, setting it up will be a bit more complicated than an animated gif, but hopefully the extra effort will result in more clicks.
I’m still interested in hearing from a few other people here who use Flash banners. Did anyone notice an increase in clicks with a Flash banner compared to an animated gif?
Macromedia claims 98.2% of people can see flash.
Good to know. Thanks.
A techy point of view:
While flash is a very attractive format to use, it isn’t as widely accepted as Macromedia would lead on.
Not everyone has the plugin that is required to view Flash files and it usually doesn’t load nearly as fast as other formats. By the time a page loads your banner, the visitor has navigated his or her way off of the page.
Just to throw it out there: never use flash for navigation. Even if the user has the lugin installed, Search Engines don’t think highly of flash files.
I’m not sure what the click through rates are for flash versus animated gifs, but I’d personally be more likely to click through on a gif as opposed to a flash.
