seomoz.org— Many clients love splash pages (especially flash intros), this article provides a list of effective arguments to use when talking a client out of the splash page death knell.
Oct 4, 2006View in Crawl 4
"It's your fault if you're receiving clients who are dumb enough to request a splash page."Spoken like someone who's never had a client. It's *your job* as the designer to help guide the client to the solution that's going to benefit them the most ... which includes shooting down "ideas" like splash pages. Most clients don't know what they NEED... only what they WANT. Which are often two very different things.
IMO splash pages are good if and only if you have a sub-website of product, which you just get the user all hyped up before actually entering. This practice is popular amongst (but not limited to) automakers such as BMW or Audi, electronic makers such as Sony, etc. But for a corporate website, I don't think it needs a splash page because it is just redundant clicking. Unless if you live in Canada like me where the country is largely bilingual, and that's when you need a splash page to help divert the audience to their respective languages.
What a great article.. I know that I will be reiterating some by this message, its only because I wrote this before reading comments:Please consider writing the following next:How to convince a company you work for (as a low-level functionary of the web) to ditch Flash and go instead with.. well, what exactly?As you said, Flash is very visually appealing- and the company's reasons for maintaining that as a priority stem from reasons much larger than the Internet (like TV). They want it to go "BANG!" .. so what do you give them instead?Is sublime design enough?PS. Spell check caught "internet" and says its spelled "Internet".. ha!
Closed AccountOct 4, 2006
Umm...flash works fine on my linux box.
tempusrobOct 4, 2006
"It's your fault if you're receiving clients who are dumb enough to request a splash page."Spoken like someone who's never had a client. It's *your job* as the designer to help guide the client to the solution that's going to benefit them the most ... which includes shooting down "ideas" like splash pages. Most clients don't know what they NEED... only what they WANT. Which are often two very different things.
astrotrainOct 4, 2006
That's right user..you have Internet Explorer... watch the pretty ActiveX splash page while I download Spyware and pr0n to your PC.... mu-ha-ha-ha
sastianOct 4, 2006
Jared rocks. I know this guy personally and you should heed his every humorus word :)
chungthomasOct 4, 2006
IMO splash pages are good if and only if you have a sub-website of product, which you just get the user all hyped up before actually entering. This practice is popular amongst (but not limited to) automakers such as BMW or Audi, electronic makers such as Sony, etc. But for a corporate website, I don't think it needs a splash page because it is just redundant clicking. Unless if you live in Canada like me where the country is largely bilingual, and that's when you need a splash page to help divert the audience to their respective languages.
lor3nzoOct 5, 2006
There's a special heaven for clients arguing that they need SPLASH!
ccblakerOct 5, 2006
What a great article.. I know that I will be reiterating some by this message, its only because I wrote this before reading comments:Please consider writing the following next:How to convince a company you work for (as a low-level functionary of the web) to ditch Flash and go instead with.. well, what exactly?As you said, Flash is very visually appealing- and the company's reasons for maintaining that as a priority stem from reasons much larger than the Internet (like TV). They want it to go "BANG!" .. so what do you give them instead?Is sublime design enough?PS. Spell check caught "internet" and says its spelled "Internet".. ha!