10 replies to this topic

[RightBrainer]

Hi, y'all. At the place where I work as an e-commerce copywriter, we are about to take a pretty successful, basic, unpretentious e-commerce website and guck it up--er, I mean, enhance it--with fancy flash animation on virtually every page. (I've jokingly asked my boss if we're going to have flash on the checkout pages, too. Heck, it might turn out to be no joke. )

The folks who are steering all of this seem to be pretty anti-copy and not too crazy about SEO, either...it's regarded as a necessary evil, it seems. They're into copy minimalism, a very fashion-ad look and feel, uber-cool bells and whistles, etc. etc. etc.

Anyway, we are going to be doing graceful degradation out the wazoo to work around all the bells and whistles.

Question: Does graceful degradation really work? Are there complications and possible snafus?

And what about usability issues? If there are flash movies on practically every page, could this interfere with the shopping experience? Might it annoy customers after a while? (It annoys the heck out of me, but then, I live in the boonies, and I still have dial-up....)

Thanks in advance for any enlightenment y'all can provide?

Not a Flash Fan

Edited by RightBrainer, 19 September 2007 - 12:15 AM.

[EddyGonzalez]

I would say having flash videos throughout the checkout process will most definitely affect the shopping experience, especially if these videos slow down the pages or start automatically (my pet hate!)

I couldn't comment on 'graceful degradation' but I'm sure the mods will be able to help you out.

My advice from a similar experience I had with an ecommerce site is to put analytics on the site so you can measure what damage if any the flash is doing to the shopping experience. I was able to provide metrics that proved that the cumbersome way the ecommerce site was developed and in particluar the checkout process, meant that people were dropping off in their bucket loads. Of course, you would want to avoid the site being developed in this way in the first place, but we unfortunately inherited the site.

Good luck

[Randy]

If by graceful degradation you mean making sure the site works properly for those who do not use Flash and/or Javascript, it certainly can't hurt. And is in fact the way the coding for sites with these elements should work.

As to all the rest, I hope you have some conversion benchmarks already established for the current site. For example, do you know how many unique visitors the site gets on average today, and how many of those UV's convert into paying customers? There's all sorts of data you can track, but those are the most important two.

The reason I say that is it should be pretty apparent pretty quickly if your conversion rates plummet or rise if you already have some benchmarks to compare against. So if you suddenly see less traffic --ostensibly because the search engines are less able to tell what a page is about because Flash has replaced good copy-- you'll know there's a problem. The same goes if your unique traffic numbers stays the same but your conversion rates suffer.

If you don't have those benchmarks in place before the changes take place it will be very difficult to prove if the changes help, hurt or cause no changes.

[RightBrainer]

Thanks!

Yes, Randy, we do have those conversion benchmarks. This is the crazy thing: We recently overhauled another successful site that had been converting quite well, whereupon conversion rates did plummet. Yet now we're doing the sane thing (only more so!) to this site. It's making me crazy.

Oh well, life in Dilbert-World....

[jehochman]

You should look up progressive enhancement, because that's what you are thinking about, not graceful degradation.

[GregL]

As an online shopper I will say I hate Flash sites. Of course, I am a man, so that might make a difference, but I want to see the products I am interested in as quickly as possible, with information about those products cleanly and quickly presented. Flash sites are slower, harder to navigate (at least to me) and I often bounce right off when I see it.

If history shows this doesn't work why do it? Because Scott Adams needs material? The IT budget money had to be spent?

[nethy]

I've never seen a flash shopping cart. Is their such a thing?
I mean completely flash not just that the normal shopping cart contains flash elements.

Yes, Randy, we do have those conversion benchmarks. This is the crazy thing: We recently overhauled another successful site that had been converting quite well, whereupon conversion rates did plummet. Yet now we're doing the sane thing (only more so!) to this site. It's making me crazy.

Don't answer if you aren't cool with it, but I was curious:

Are you guys consultants working on other people's site or inhouse guys working on your own thing?

[RightBrainer]

I've never seen a flash shopping cart. Is their such a thing?
I mean completely flash not just that the normal shopping cart contains flash elements.

Nethy, I was kidding about this. We've been planning flash for so darned many pages--including an SEO "history of the company" page! -- that I wouldn't put it past some folks to put flash in the checkout funnel, too.

But it was basically a joke...I don't think we'll go quite that far.

I could be wrong, but.... :lol

Don't answer if you aren't cool with it, but I was curious:

Are you guys consultants working on other people's site or inhouse guys working on your own thing?

No problema!!! We're in-house folks in a very big corporation. That's why I'm here incognito.

To the person up above who said he hated flash sites: Me, too! I despise them, and I do not understand why people are so enamored with them. It almost seems like a Big Corporate Ego Thing--i.e., we can feel so self-important if we have all the latest bells and whistles. But, er, hate to be a philistine...but what about usability and shoppability? What about click-throughs and conversions? And of what use is it to have a fancy-schmancy flash-heavy site if no one can find it? In the immortal words of Dilbert: Gaaaaaaa!

OK, I'd better quit before someone finds me here and fires me.

[RightBrainer]

Hi, Jechoman! Thanks for the info...it's fascinating.

Our SEO consultant keeps using the term "graceful degradation," and what they describe matches up with what the Wikipedia article identifies as graceful degradation. But "progressive enhancement" does sound more appropriate, especially given the growing popularity of handhelds. I will ask them about it!

Thanks.....

[RightBrainer]

Hi, again, Jehochman!

I shared that Wikipedia article with some folks at work. It was very well received. The resources at the end are fantastic! So many of the linked articles really resonated with our experiences.

Thanks!

[1dmf]

I would also point out, that Flash doesn't even work on my version of Vista/IE7 (64 bit) , I take it your company has money to burn!