# Flash website templates



## M.D. Vaden (Feb 11, 2007)

How many people who are thinking about getting a website, have checked into the pre-made flash templates?

Some are very nicely done, and only cost like $70.

It may require a full day for a webmaster with flash skills to edit, but that may still keep a companies cost to like $500 for an elegant site, instead of thousands.

I was browsing a few today after this landscaper posted his link on lawnsite...

http://www.greenskeeperlc.com

I'm fairly certain that that site is a template. But many are that nice or better.


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## Ekka (Feb 11, 2007)

Mario

You just cant help yourself can you? lol Flash websites .... bells and whistles but big ZERO in the rankings dept.

If you rely on people finding your website to contact you not the other way around then you'll be sorry for using flash no matter how much it glitters. :greenchainsaw:


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## M.D. Vaden (Feb 11, 2007)

Ekka said:


> Mario
> 
> You just cant help yourself can you? lol Flash websites .... bells and whistles but big ZERO in the rankings dept.
> 
> If you rely on people finding your website to contact you not the other way around then you'll be sorry for using flash no matter how much it glitters. :greenchainsaw:



I should have guessed that you would be the first to chime in  Mainly, I'm thinkng of the guys who don't plan to drive traffic from the internet. Yesterday, I added a chunk of information at the end of my site's search engine topic page about driving traffic from flyers, ads and cards.

1. In some cities, there will be too many websites someday to practically strive for search engine results. 2. Many companies highly underestimate driving traffic from flyers and advertisements.

I'd take flash in a heartbeat if I had triple the internet competition and had to start from scratch. Mainly because I enjoy the cool looking effects. 100% of every web traffic article I've read, focused on search engine type traffic.

I'm developing my page to be miles ahead of the game for the various handfuls of people who should not get wrapped-up in the search engine rat-race. On the page, I refer to it as limited treasure.

The advice page concludes at the end with effective ideas for driving traffic from advertising, LOCALLY. And that's something each company can almost totally control and make their own "algorithyms" for. And for someone who plans to expend 100% of their effort to driving traffic from written ads, FLASH would be excellent.

If they have a yellow page listing, then it's still going to show on the internet at the same identical spot anyway, so Flash won't affect that at all.


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## Locoweed (Feb 11, 2007)

I'm sure I will be part of a small minority when I tell you that I do not like flash and have removed it from my computer.

There are too many irritating sites and ads that use flash in a manor that I find to be highly irritating out there. It also uses up too much bandwidth for folks on dial up.

My $.02


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## Ekka (Feb 11, 2007)

Mario

If you saw how much junk mail letterboxes here have everyday you'd realise letterbox drops are way worse than internet as an advertising medium. It may be better there for you but I'll take photos of what we get here.

Why don't you just embed some flash into a HTML site?

Or have 2 sites, one flash and one html? As the search engines cant read flash there'll be no penalty for duplicate content. Just call one .com and the other .net piss easy!

I'm the other way around. I had a flash site for 3 years did big fat jack chit ... paid over $2K for it also, now I rebuilt html and get some results. 

No way would I risk my business on a total flash site again. They say some day the bots will be able to read flash till then adios .flv :hmm3grin2orange: 



> In some cities, there will be too many websites someday to practically strive for search engine results.



Not true. Unlike any other form of advertising this one can make immediate responses to adjustment plus you'll be able to see who's infront of you and work on it. One of the important factors considered is how long your site has been around ... so long termers will have some advantage over noobs. Will there be more websites for tree business than businesses listed in Yellow Pages? YES. Coz the entry is cheaper but to SEO the site for performance is the same as upsizing and adding color to Yellow Pages ... hence a more decent and logical race is on not dictated by a conglomerate.

If you don't make that front page of a search result you have to work at it ... what will happen is there will be never ending tweaking going on till it gets too expensive to run the race for the result. That's when the bubble will be burst and the line drawn for expenses and you'll have to find another advertising medium.

However, this may have already occured in some areas (like here) and your letterboxes are stuffed full already, so is your papers and so is the Yellow Pages and then what?

Then you have market saturation, prices plummet, and life gets tough. Find a new job I suppose. :help:


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## M.D. Vaden (Feb 12, 2007)

Actually, it's more real than it seems - given a bit of time of course.

If you have 100 webmasters, each doing virtually the same perfect optimization, it's virtually a matter of chance as to who gets on the first page.

(Edited several paragraphs out since I started a new topic)

Before I forget - here's one site I get a kick out of browsing...

http://www.unmelted.com/Dynamic_Swish

The circular looking album one is nifty, although maybe a bit bouncy. There are many very slick templates if you search for "art and photography" in the menu.

One alternative to jazz up a site without going 100% Flash, can be sticking with HTML or CSS for the home page, but using a Flash template for the photo album.

It had crossed my mind to drop my album with Image Event, and put up a Flash photo album with fewer images, and of course using the html site.


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## toscottm (Feb 13, 2007)

*Web Sites: Graphic Misperceptions*



Ekka said:


> Mario
> 
> You just cant help yourself can you? lol Flash websites .... bells and whistles but big ZERO in the rankings dept.
> 
> If you rely on people finding your website to contact you not the other way around then you'll be sorry for using flash no matter how much it glitters.



Ekka & Locoweed,

Agree with you completely! I don't know why so many get caught up thinking a web site needs to be so 'graphical'. Perhaps people confuse the web as being a form of media that needs to compete visually with television. Instead, isn't the internet supposed to be the place that the user goes to get the information that they want, when they want it. 

It drives me nuts to go to some web site and find a 30 second flash presentation as a splash introduction. As a humourous comparison, when going to pick up a few things at 7-11, do they force you to watch a circus out in their parking lot before letting you in?

Visual dynamics can be dealt with in a much simpler way. My site uses a pool of header graphics (currently only 3). Each page click results in a randomly chosen header. Simple solution and it is cheap. I can create and upload headers myself without a graphic designer. 

Below are some interesting viewpoints on graphic misperceptions, written by a web designer with anti-graphic design beliefs. Note the company name is weblogIQ - web logic spelled IQ. He is correct in that even most 'web' designers get caught up in the world of imagery instead of information. With my own web site, it was decided that sharing knowledge and generating sales was the goal although I could instead have tried to dazzle Disney.

See these articles:

http://www.weblogiq.com/pages/page_34.asp

http://www.weblogiq.com/pages/page_20.asp

http://www.weblogiq.com/pages/page_16.asp

Each article presents very good points!

Best Wishes!

Scott


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## toscottm (Feb 13, 2007)

*Web Site: Marketing Intentions*

Vaden,

Although I disagree with the 'graphic heavy' suggestions of your original post, I do agree that business owners need to get away from their search engine ranking focus and get with the reality that competiting with the world on positioning isn't how to sell a business. Some spend so much time, effort and money on trying to gain a Google edge that they fail to provide worthy information once they get someone to their site.

Your advice that conventional advertising that points to a web site is good marketing is my belief also. Get people to the web site and then give them the information they need to see your business as the best choice. If investment is all about getting them to the site and then giving them no more information than a phone number and a short-list of services, than they have nothing better than what could have been published as a 2" x 4" space in a newspaper.

Going back to the original discussion however, I am yet to have someone call to let me know that they are not going to do business with me because my site doesn't have smooth image transitions showing a tree changing with the seasons or a cool time lapse of a tree being trimmed. I have however had contact from those that were impressed with the expert information provided.

That's my viewpoint!

Scott


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## M.D. Vaden (Feb 13, 2007)

"Graphic Heavy" may not work in some areas, but where we moved from near Portland, the richness of the high-tech industry, including Intel being next door in Hillsboro, provides a multitude of fast computers and fast internet.

I'm only mentioning Flash as an option.

If HTML is the way to go for someone, that option is just as easy to take.


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