A note I was asked to write to a client that had so much sarcasm and snark that it became a blog post. Spiffy:
In 1998, splash screens were cool.
SEO wasn’t a factor. You could manipulate Alta Vista, the Google of the day, by messing with your meta tags. What was on the page didn’t matter in the slightest.
Web users weren’t jaded, and in fact the odds of someone viewing your splash screen actually being in the process of visiting a website for the very first time were actually pretty high.
The “oh cool” factor as your logo and content rendered not only existed but might even trigger user to call a friend over to see an effect that no one had ever seen before.
1998 was really quite some time ago. Things have changed.
Now a website is as much a utility as Microsoft Excel. The function is different, but the underlying idea is the same: Get the user to the thing they want as quickly as possible.
In addition, people’s attention spans are shorter. No one complains when syndicators (Hi Sean) cut the intro to Two and a Half Men (sorry for bringing that up) to just a few seconds to make room for more spots. It’s not why anyone was tuning in, and I suspect even in first run the intro falls victim to TiVo fast forward more often than not.
Imagine if every time you started your car, you had to sit through a 10 second “welcome” animation before you could do shift into drive. Some cars have this for their electronics packages and no one likes them. If they’re even aware of them, they don’t care. If they are aware, it probably bugs them. No one sits in awed anticipation for the lens flare on the Prius logo. (Citation needed, but I challenge anyone to find me a statistically relevant sample that disagrees).
And now, in addition to annoying if not driving away users, it annoys if not drives away the GoogleBot and negatively impacts the SEO.
Certainly there are things you can do to mitigate that.
Certainly you can key your site to set a cookie and only load the branding intro one time… but given how much time, effort and expense goes into creating an intro like that and mitigating the ill effects why do it at all if everyone’s only going to see it only once?
Flash is a great technology and can greatly enhance a website when used properly.
Video production is cool too, but you have to use it appropriately. What if every time you wanted to brush your teeth your bathroom mirror played a :15 for Colgate before the holder would release the toothbrush?
A website is there to draw users in. Some sites are there to engage users with their content. A splash screen puts a barrier between your users and your content or functionality, and I haven’t seen anything since circa 1998 to justify the cons.
My two cents, and I’d love to hear an opposite opinion. Like this email I received back in about 2000 from the true guru of web design: http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html (won’t work on an iPad, sorry, blame Steve Jobs)
