Good moning fellow VA's,

I need a bit of advice here. I really like the look and feel of a flash website. Do you think this type of website is practical for my business and potential clients?

Sarraya

Hi Sarraya,

I personally don't like flash and if a site opens to a video sales pitch and/or music, I get out as quickly as possible. I don't feel the actual written content of a website sinks in as well when there are distractions. But then that's just me - I don't care for anything flashy or noisy any time.

Lynne

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The Wordpro Wizard
www.wordprowizard.com

Hi Sarraya, for your website I would stay away from Flash sites for the simple reason that they are not indexed by search engines the same as a static HTML or a blog is indexed. I had a few clients who had Flash sites and though they looked really pretty, they had a high bounce rate (people came and left right away without looking at other pages in the site), took too long to load, and updates took a lot longer to do.

It took me a while but I am really loving blogs lately! I have one static html site for my main "hire me" site and a blog for articles, posts, and interaction. If you work for service professionals, like coaches, then the interaction is what will build their business.

Lisa

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Lisa Wells~Online Biz Manager
Free Marketing Tips, Resources, and Reports for your VA Biz

In my opinion, flash websites really aren't the best choice for small businesses. Although it may work for big companies like M & M's, etc that are seeking to give an 'entertainment' experience to their visitors, small businesses don't have the type of audience that are willing to sit and wait for a flash site to load.
Not only that, but a quality flash site requires an truly expert web designer which comes with an extreme price tag, something most small businesses would find well out of their website budget.
Like Lynne, my personal reaction when landing on most flash pages is to exit quickly, and it gives me the impression that the website owner needs to get with the times and get a more professional site.

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~Tina Marie Hilton of Clerical Advantage
& founder of VA Survival School

Thanks for that ladies. What program or template did you use in setting up your site?

For my static site I used a template from TemplateMonster.com and edited and host on HostGator.
For the blog site, I host on the same account and installed Wordpress using Fantastico. The theme was free and then I added plug-ins and changed the header. TemplateMonster also has Wordpress themes for sale but many of them are for lower versions of Wordpress so just be sure that what you purchase will work with your version.

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Lisa Wells~Online Biz Manager
Free Marketing Tips, Resources, and Reports for your VA Biz

My site is completely on WordPress with the Headway theme hosted on a client's private server. I also have built several client business websites with WordPress and other themes both premium and free.

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~Tina Marie Hilton of Clerical Advantage
& founder of VA Survival School

Has anyone used cubesite before to build their website? If so, what has been your experience it? I am going to look into templatemonster as well.

SarrayaVA

Wordpress is very common, and if you are slightly more savvy you can try Joomla CMS. Both are free.

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Amanda Mock
My Virtual Little Helper

I am not a fan of flash sites. They turn me off and several of my colleagues have regretted choosing to use them. I use Fatcow and am very happy with it.