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Pandora’s New Site- Could Flash Be A Thing of the Past?

Thu, Sep 29, 2011

Pandora for years has been an entirely flash based website. Which for their website service makes sense. Flash for the longest time has been the primary solution for web media such as music, video and animation. Last week Pandora launched their new website design and guess what? It is not flash based. Grant it there are a few components that use flash such as the video ad and some ads along the side use flash, but if a music player website recreates their entire website in order to avoid flash maybe we should assess why they steered away from this kind of technology.

5 Reasons Why Flash is Becoming Outdated

1. Incompatibility with new technology
Say what? New technology can’t process flash. More like new technology refuses to process flash. Apple’s iPhone, iPod and iPad do not read flash for web browsing because as Steve Jobs announced, “It causes problems and is outdated for touch based mobile technology.” This is in part because the majority of flash actions are applied through mouse hovers, and of course touch based mobile devices are incapable of hovering as with a mouse.

2. Flash is a Third Party Plugin
A third party plugin is an application that is needed to be downloaded or “plugged in” in order for you to be able to view something on a website. In other words, using flash is like a company outsourcing their customer support overseas. If the company doing their customer support doesn’t do their job well or have the latest up to date information then it causes problems for both the customer and the company. Their are better ways now to do things than to use a third party plugin where you have to rely on someone else to do their job.

3. Open Source Code is a Better Solution

Open source code in a battle with third party plugins is like Marvel hero’s Superman and Flash dukeing it out, Superman will alway win. With things like javascript and html 5, the web is becoming all the more media friendly without the help of flash. I currently build all animation effects using javascript. Such as slideshows, drop down menus, and galleries like on this custom cabinets website. Also these open source tactics are mobile friendly.

4. Flash is Bad for SEO
To entirely build a site with flash is a terrible idea from the stand point of Search Engine Optimization because search engines can not crawl that data. It’s like building an entire site with images text and all. Your site can’t be ranked for your targeted keywords because it can’t find any keywords on your site other than the title and meta tags. For more info on why flash is bad for seo check out seomoz.

5. Waiting and Needing Updates
If you think that everyone will update their flash plugin or download it for the first time just to view your site, you are naive. There is tons of ready to read open source content on the web in just about every niece you can think of. So people will be more inclined to move on rather than download an update or plugin in order to view your site. People want content that is ready, open and available, not something with long loading times, constant updates, and problems.

So is Flash a Thing of the Past?
Well, yes and no. Flash can be a great avenue for video, where it is not widely accessible on the web just yet (why do people still use IE6!), and it can give eye-popping effects for ads, but it should never be used for the entire site. You don’t need to use it for the entire site and there are by and large better ways to do what you need to (ie. open source code). Avoid flash when you can and use it sparingly.

BTW sorry all you who have flash based sites that are reading this post. Just passing truth and trying to help a brotha’ out!

God speed superman fans,

_rec

Liked this post? You might also like this one about website development for photography sites.

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It is my, Steven Records, desire to see the American Church be all that it can be... healthy, faithful, and growing. So this free resource is made available to help churches and ministry's grow through practical ideas and strategies. Please, watch this vision video to know what I am all about and how you can support the vision to create thriving churches and reach the lost.

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SEO and Why Your Church Needs It

Sun, Sep 11, 2011

The big question for many is what is what is SEO to begin with. Most people are not familiar with the term. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In short it is the work needed to make your site reach the top of search engines for certain keywords. Right now I am currently doing this search engine marketing strategy for a client of mine. There is a lot of work that goes into but the evident result is a constant stream of wanted traffic to your website that you are not having to pay out for.

Now there is a lot of information out there about SEO and for the most part it is constantly changing so information varies. Point being you will want to hire out to someone that knows what they are doing for the most part. At least for the first few stages of SEOing.

The first stage is KEYWORDS.
Finding relevant, non-competitive keywords that have a decent amount of searches is a pain, but it can result in drawing the right people to your site and ultimately, to your church. In this case, SEO is an evangelistic tactic in reaching the lost. People do searches for anything and everything. Lets say you have an addiction recovery program and someone does a search for “alcoholism recovery” and yours is the first one that shows up, then they decide to choose your bible based program over a program that is not Christian simply because yours was the first one on google.

The second stage is OPTIMIZATION
Once you have your keywords you need your site to contain those keywords throughout every part of the site. This will also help visitors know that they found what they were searching for when the site content is relevant to their original search. This also will boost your rankings for those keywords you searched for because your site content is relevant to those keywords.

The third stage is LINK BUILDING
Once you arrive at this point the need for an expert decreases, but it will take some research and time to know what to do. Link building is an long process of getting people to create a link to your site. Popularity is relevance to search engines, so the more links you have to your site the higher your page will be ranked. Remember that you want quality links that have high page ranks and/or .edu .gov web addresses. Your site needs to be submitted to search engines, and linked on social networks, blogs, articles, rss feeds and anything else you can link to.

The last thing to do is CHECK YOUR RESULTS
You need to see what keywords are driving traffic to your site after 3-6 months and then adjust your content to what is working.

Remember that SEO is an ongoing thing that is not just a set it and forget it marketing strategy. It will help build a web presence for your church and draw traffic to your site. If the quality of your sites content is good then the more likely you will turn visitors to disciples.

Best wishes,

_rec

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Budget Marketing / Church Marketing / Local Ads / Web — No Comments

All New Photography Site! And a few tips for yours.

Wed, Jan 19, 2011

I am so excited about this new photography website! It is clean, simple, and compatible with most mobile devices.

The site is recphotography.com. I encourage you to check it out!

There were a few major reasons why I decided to remake the website entirely, although the previous site was only a year old.

Reasons for new site:
1. Photography site was used for multiple media avenues via. photo, design, web, printing.
For a site intended for multi-media, it is fine to do that, but for a photography site it is distracting and less targeted.
2. Site was too large
No photography site should be 60 pages long. People don’t check every page, and if all the information is laid out on the site, it leaves less reason for a personal connection.
3. Flash Based Galleries.
Flash sure does look good, but it takes forever to load, needs a plugin, and is not compatible for most mobile devices like iPhone and iPad.
4. Photo sizes were small
If the prospective client can’t see the quality and detail of your work, they are less likely to hire.
5. Too graphic oriented
People don’t want to see your sense of graphical style on a photography site, they want to see great photography.

Here are some screen shots of the new site.

5 Tips for Photography Sites:
1. Be Specific
As the saying goes, being a mile wide and an inch deep is a disaster. Being specific is having a target in mind. From a promotional and search engine stand point, you will be can taylor to a specific demographic and be higher to the top on sites like google and bing. I am sure you have seen sites say, ” Photography for wedding, senior, maternity, portrait, babies, commercial, sports, pets, and more!” In the attempt to allude to everything imaginable they loose their status on the web. Try to stick with just a few groups, and see your promotions and search numbers grow.

2. Make it small and easy
One web development book that is a good read is, “Don’t Make Me Think.” People today don’t want to figure out your site before they attain information from it. Clients want concise, simple, and easy layouts. Give your prospective clients the opportunity to focus on the content of your site rather than the layout. Have your site easy to navigate with obvious links, and keeping the pages and content that is absolutely necessary.

3. Use Javascript instead of Flash
Unfortunately most photography sites use flash. Although flash has been a primary source for photography sites for years, it is now becoming out dated. Javascript is the new work horse for image viewing and transitional effects. The mobile era has come, and flash is incompatible with most mobile devices. Meaning, if you have flash, no one can see your site from their iPhone, Blackberry, or iPad.

4. Use Big Images
With the larger screen sizes today, people not only can see bigger images on websites, but they want to as well. Large photos have been a huge hit for photography websites. This allows the photographer to show off all the detail and quality of your work.

5. Eliminate Distractions
In our efforts to be cool, often times we distract from the message. Great Photography is the message, so stray away from using busy backgrounds with a lot of design elements. Solid colors or very simple non-distracting backgrounds are prime choices to keep the message at hand in focus. By making your site less distracting, people can be more engaged with your photographs.

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News / Photography / Teaching / Web — 1 Comment

Behind the Scenes Look at Web Development

Tue, Jan 11, 2011

I am now in the process of remaking my site into a blog for creative training, portfolio, and for multi-media promotion; Instead of doing the normal thing, which is to develop the site on a remote test server, I thought it would be a good idea to do all the development on the live server. This way you can get a behind the scenes look on how to develop a site.

I am using wordpress as a resource for all the blog development (php coding). What I will be doing is going in and changing all the styling and structure to my liking (using CSS and Javascript). The rest of the pages I am going to develop from scratch. The code languages I use for that is html, css, javascript, and spry. The html is what gives the page structure, the css styles everything, the javascript is for motion effects added to the navigation menu, and the spry is used to validate the email form on the contact page.

So if you are visiting the site for the first time and are wondering why everything is not completely done, it’s on purpose. Hope that you can learn some stuff just by seeing a site under development from start to finish.