Website Tips: Splash Pages
A website splash page generally contains a large graphic or Flash animation that serves as an introduction to the site and invites the user to enter. Unfortunately, most visitors and search engines don’t like them.
From a visitor’s point of view, a barrier has been erected to the information they are seeking. They’re expected to view a “commercial” for your business before they can visit your site. Many people will skip the intro (if that’s an option) or simply leave, especially if they have a slow connection and the page takes too long to load. And since splash pages are typically heavy on graphics and light on text, search engines find very little content to index.
Tempting though it might be to have a attactive splash page, the effort is better spent developing a beautifully designed, content-rich home page your visitors (and the search engines) will love.
(Flickr photo from Peter Kaminski via Creative Commons)
Kristina Meyer designs and develops websites for small businesses, and specializes in equine-related sites. She lives in Oregon with her husband, two cats, a dog and 
April 11th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Dear Kristina, you are right no with this advice! Skip the flash, please!
Remember that many horse lovers live in country/rural places and only have slow dial up. Slow loading web pages just makes them trot on by.
July 8th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Videos are getting more popular all the time with more and more people opting for a faster Internet connection (when it is available). So posting videos on your website is a good way to bring in more people and keep them entertained. But have it so they can choose to watch the video or not. Also let people know the size of the video clip before they click on it. Or post links to good videos you found on YouTube.com with comments about what they are about.