For instance, a website which serves as a depository for articles and information catering to lawyers would probably not be a good candidate for a Flash "makeover". However, if you are a rock band, you may want to consider it.

Those are two very opposite ends of spectrum, but exemplify how you should consider your audience.

Corporate, retail, industrial, informational and many other types of websites can actually benefit from a little bit of Flash if it is created professionally and used properly (especially in combination with "static" design).

You’ve worked hard to get traffic—now don’t drive them away.

1. Fatal Flaw One—Bouncing, Wiggling Animated Clip Art This one is really annoying to website visitors, and a sure sign you don’t know what you’re doing, especially if you have them all over place. Just because they’re free, doesn’t mean you should use them.

SOLUTION—You’re probably not a graphics designer if you resort to using clip art, so don’t worry about your weakness, just choose a nice color scheme instead in your tables. (More on that later.) Colors don’t take extra time to download either.

2. Fatal Flaw Two—Embedded Music Clips Good grief. Don’t do this. I don’t care how catchy your elevator tune is. No one wants to hear it. Sometimes speakers are turned up and a sudden blare of music will scare heck out of your visitors. They’ll probably leave!

SOLUTION—If you have a site that sells music, then people will expect to hear it sometime somewhere at your site. Make your music links clickable—a choice that visitors can make to listen!

3. Fatal Flaw Three—Unstructured Text I can’t stand it when I land on a site that I have to read from each side of my screen to other left and right as well as up and down. Even if you want to write one long sales letter—which obviously works fine for hundreds of rich webmasters, you still need to format it into a legible width.