New technologies arise every day in the Web world. Six years ago you would have been hard pressed to find anything other than text and images on a Web site. Now nearly every site has Java, Flash animations and a billion other bells and whistles. Unfortunately, These bits of eye candy often do more harm than good.
Web sites don’t need gizmos to make them effective if the designer did his or her job right. The old tried-and-true method of text and a few images can be just as effective – often times more – than all the latest technologies you can think of. The advantages may surprise you.
Download Time
Not everyone on the Web has DSL or a cable modem – in fact, they make up just a tiny percentage of Web users. The rest of us have to rely on the now-pokey dial-up modems to get our Internet fix, and we don’t want to wait three minutes for an applet to initialize or a Flash animation to load. In fact, studies have shown that the average time a person will wait for a site to load is around seven seconds. On a 28.8 modem, it can take a lot longer than that for just one image.
On top of download time is another bit of lag called load time. Slower computer systems take longer to load things, especially if it involves Java or some type of plug-in. Each time one of these items is called from a Web page, the plug-in has to be loaded on the computer, and that can often slow things down to a crawl.
Compatibility
Download time is a concern, but patient people can usually shrug it off as a drawback to the way the Internet is set up. Compatibility, though, is another issue.
Believe it or not, the majority of people on the Web don’t have supercomputers to view your site on. Old computers and operating systems may not be compatible with the latest Web technologies. Should you choose to implement something that was just released two days ago, you will wind up alienating a large portion of your potential customers.
Security
Most Web browsers developed after the last ice age have security options built in that are somewhat customizable. Certain things can be turned on and off depending on the user. Large networks often set their security to the highest level, blocking things like Java, which, when placed in the wrong hands, can be a very malicious tool.
I’m not about to rule out using these things altogether. When used properly, almost every technology out there can be very effective. When used to cover up a bad design, though, they usually make your site flop entirely.
*Originally published at LangDesign.com
Rebecca Lang is founder of Lang Design, Inc. an Internet web design and development with an emphasis on marketing website business. Serving businesses nationwide, we are located in Wilmington, Delaware, just south of the Philadelphia Metro area.
