Winery Web Sites and Macromedia Flash
Macromedia's Flash enables Web sites to do enhanced presentation of audio, images, and video (so-called "rich media"), along with interactivity. Most systems come pre-installed with the free Flash player (Macromedia cites a statistic which indicates over 97% of users can view Flash presentations). Lots of Web designers are eager to take advantage of Flash to create visually-arresting "cool" sites for their clients?
Should you be using Flash on your winery Web site?
Let's look at some examples:
WINERIES WHICH DON'T USE FLASH ON THEIR HOME PAGE:
- http://www.acornwinery.com/
- http://www.connvalleyvineyards.com/
- http://www.buckzin.com/
- http://www.mirassou.com/
- http://www.lynmarwinery.com/ (used to, though)
WINERIES WHICH DO USE FLASH ON THEIR HOME PAGE:
- http://www.inmanfamilywines.com/
- http://www.ironhorsevineyards.com/
- http://www.zdwines.com/
- http://www.quintessa.com/
- http://www.kingestate.com/
Which of these 10 sites are most/least visitor-effective? Does Flash play any part in it? Please offer a comment, especially if you're from one of the wineries above. I'll be posting my analysis in a couple of days.
(Update: read my analysis of Sites That Don't Flash and Sites Which Flash)
(If there are some particular good or bad examples of Flash/non-Flash winery sites, post them with your comments as well! With over 2,200+ winery Web sites, I'm sure I've missed some worth mentioning here.)
Thank you for your insight into our winery website. As I read your comments I understand that you believe our use of Flash is appropriate, effective, and not distracting for visitors;however our nav key titles could be more intuitive to help the visitor and we should be enticing in our narrative on the What's New page. Thank you for your feedback...any additional thoughts or clarifications?
Tracy Sweeney
Consumer Marketing
Quintessa
tracy@quintessa.com
Posted by:Tracy Sweeney | June 07, 2006 at 01:24 PM