Splash Pages - Are they a good thing?

A splash page is a page that is displayed when visitors first go to your website. Splash pages are also called "enter pages", or "gateway pages". They often contain a Flash animation or an image. The visitor then clicks on a link, button or image to go through to your main website.

Splash pages can be fun. But they can have negative effects on the usability as well as the returning traffic for your website. Studies have shown that over 25% of all visitors turn away from splash pages and never actually enter the main site.

The most obvious problem when using a splash page is if animations or images are too large and take too long to load. The average attention span for a web surfer is measured in seconds, and many people won't wait for large images or animations to load before they decide to leave the page.

A “skip intro” button is a good idea, but not all visitors will see the button or link and some might become confused or frustrated. If you are using a splash page, it is very important to include a direct link to the main page somewhere on the splash page that is clearly visible.

The above issues assume that the visitor has found your page. As splash pages generally do not contain a lot of content, most search engines will have little or nothing to index. Google will sometimes ignore your website if you are using a splash page as they can be misleading. By using splash pages, your website could be very difficult to locate in a web search.

Some people view websites as a brochure, and they feel that as a brochure always has a cover, so should their website. To these people we would say that when visitors go to your website they have already decided to "open the cover".

Others view a website as a billboard advert. With a billboard you have to get people's attention while they are engaged in some other activity such as boarding a train or driving to work. When people visit your website you already have their attention, what they want are the details of what you have to offer.

Whether you want a splash page is entirely up to you, but we would not recommend it. We are happy to build one into your website, but ask is that you consider the above first.

What is Flash?

Flash enables you to include special graphics, animation, timeline effects and sound to websites. However clever and "whizz-bang", we believe that these are distracting to the display of relevant web content, and also use up some of the "horsepower" of your computer. We therefore do not recommend it.

What are Frames?

Frames are rectangular containers in a browser window that show separate web pages within the main web page. If frames don't have a border, scroll bar, or different background colour, you may not realise that they are present. Frames can be used to create some very complex web applications.

You should avoid using frames because .....

Bookmarks (favourites) - If you bookmark the main frame page and then come back to it, the default document will be loaded in each frame. It will not "remember" what documents were in the individual frames when you bookmarked it.

If you bookmark a page by using the right mouse button you will bookmark just that frame. When you come back to it you will only see that frame which may be meaningless without the other frames which make up the rest of the page.

The Web address (URL) does not change - The URL of a framed page stays the same, regardless of how many links were followed inside it. This can be annoying for readers who cut and paste a URL to email to a colleague, for example.

Search engines – These have difficulty coping with framed pages. If a search engine does find framed content, it will link to the frame, not the whole page, so the user is likely to get a part of a page that does not make sense on its own. For example, frames are often used to hold the navigation links. Without the navigation the user will have no way of getting to the rest of the site.

The BACK button - Frames often break the browsers 'back' button, leading to unpredictable results and frustration for the user.

Printing - Printing a regular web page is simple. With a framed page the user has to make choices about how and which part of the page to print.

Horizontal scrollbars - Vertical scrollbars are fine, in that you can read a body of text and then scroll down and read the next block. You can avoid using the mouse by using the cursor keys or by using the mouse wheel if your mouse has one. However, horizontal scrollbars mean that you have to use your mouse to scroll across the page for every line of text.

With Framed pages, you can end up with several horizontal scrollbars on one a page.