Q: We promote our web site in all our ad campaigns, but according to my website statistics program, we are getting very few visitors who click past
first page. The site has a cool Flash intro page that designer said would impress visitors, but it doesn't seem to be working. What can we do to get people to spend more time on site? -- Christopher O.A: The first thing you should do, Christopher, is find that designer and beat living Flash out of him. It won't increase time visitors spend on your website, but it will make you feel better after you've read this column.
What your designer thought would appeal to visitors is probably very thing that is driving them away. A Flash introduction page (Macromedia Flash is a software program used to create animations for Web pages) may seem "cool" to you, but from a website visitor's point of view, they can be about as appealing as sitting in front row of a Pokemon movie with four hundred screaming six year olds (and here comes segue, folks).
In December, 1997, during an episode of Pokemon, popular Japanese TV cartoon that has spawned everything from movies to action figures to lunch boxes, a scene featured a rocket explosion that flashed red and blue lights in rapid succession. After episode, over 600 children were taken to hospitals complaining of seizures, blurred vision, headaches, dizziness, and nausea. Any adult who has ever been exposed to Pokemon for more than two seconds can understand nausea, but seizures at first baffled doctors. Scientists ultimately came to attribute mass reaction to "photosensitive seizures," which are brought on by exposure to certain visual stimuli like rapidly flashing lights on a TV screen. Remember when your mom told you not to sit so close to TV or you'd ruin your eyes? Turns out she knew what she was talking about. Who knew?
The event caused such concern that Japanese broadcasters and health officials met to discuss ways to prevent future occurrences of bad-cartoon induced illnesses. They established guidelines for broadcast of flashing images: no image may flicker faster than three times per second; flashing images should be displayed for no more than two seconds; and stripes, whorls, and concentric circles should not take up largest portion of a TV screen.
It's my humble opinion that these rules should apply to websites as well. I've been in Internet design business for nearly a decade and I have been witness to numerous websites that could induce photosensitive seizures in blind moles. It sounds like your website might be suffering from a similar ailment.
If visitor's are not clicking past your fancy Flash intro page, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that therein lies your problem. Remove Flash intro page for a few weeks to see if your website's click-through rate improves and number of page views increase. "Click-through rate" refers to number of visitors who click links on your homepage to go deeper into your site. "Page views" refers to overall number of web pages that were viewed by visitors. If click-through and page view rates improve, you'll know that Flash intro was your problem.
