Re: Flash in the pan

From: Kim Brooks <kbrooks_at_bardo-brooks.com>
Date: Tue 02 May 2000 10:53:37 -0700

BILL ANDERSON WROTE:
> To a certain extent, both businesses and consumers
> expect to see some sort of 'multimedia' display to
> establish any credibility. If you don't have it, you
> must not be serious about your site/business.

TO WHICH BRAD JENSEN REPLIED:
> I've noticed that the high-authority sites are going
> to no frames, white page, minimal java.

I have to agree with Brad, and disagree with Bill. Not
that I think sites with flash must be run by
"goofballs", but it's true that if you were to follow
the lead of the top ten b-2-c sites and top ten b-2-b
sites, I would bet that none of them have flash intros.
A non-scientific list would include...

http://www.ibm.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/
http://www.oracle.com/
http://www.yahoo.com/
http://www.cnet.com/
http://www.cnet.com/
http://www.zdnet.com/
http://www.amazon.com/

Hmm. Looks like whether the sites are corporate,
publishers, or consumer retailers, all are Flash-free.
In fact, there is no multimedia in any of these
examples (except for some sound or content-related
services). In fact, these sites aren't even using HTML
splash pages or opening-menu approaches - they drop you
into the content & services right away.

I spoke at a Washington Software Association event a
year ago - I said it then and I think it's more & more
true: People's connections get faster, technology and
multimedia get fancier, development gets easier,
hardware & connections get cheaper. But Sites just get
simpler and more text-based. Many of us 4 or 5 years
ago thought, "I can't wait till everyone has fact
connections and we'll be able to use lots of graphics!"
Instead, people are using -LESS- of everything. I
don't have market data on this trend, but if you look
at the top sites and compare their evolution over the
last 2-4 years, it's true that they get simpler. I can
say that the U.S.News site is actually smaller in total
file size than it was when we launched it back in 1995.
I also talked with Cotton Coulson of c|net.com last
year, and he also said that when he started there as
lead design in 1996, the menus were graphics; by last
year, they moved everything to text. His comment was,
"we're going back to text for everything - it's easier
& faster, the users like it that way. We're getting
rid of all the b.s."

Remember when everyone had an intro splash page with,
"Welcome to our site! Click here for the pretty
version, click here for the text-only version!"? What
a pain. Eventually, they got tired of maintaining
redundant pages, and picked a middle-of-the-road
compromise between lots-of-stuff and text-only. Then
they kept getting even simpler...

Why? Because no matter how fast your modem or ISDN or
DSL or T1 connection is, simpler is always faster than
fancy. As competition between sites increases, users
will naturally choose the fastest, easiest services.
If I'm searching on "hard drives" and Yahoo! presents a
list of 20 choices, I will quickly click down the list.
If something doesn't load quickly, I hit 'Back' and
immediately bump to the next item on the list. So the
fastest sites with the most info on the front page win.
No matter how fast your site is now, it must stay
faster than the competition.

Can't decide if you need a Flash intro? Do one of two
things: look at what the top sites in your market are
doing, or ask your customers what they want. The
answer is usually simpler, faster, easier.

Kim Brooks



Received on Tue May 02 2000 - 12:53:37 CDT