How to plan a successful flash site



How to plan a successful flash web site is a very important question asked by everyone who plans to create a very good flash site. I think, a successful flash site is a site with a clear and unique content, convenient and easy navigation and, for sure, an exciting design and animation. I think every site have to be unique and should give us some information about what is this site about. For example: if you create a site where you are planning to sell choppers, you should make an easy navigation for your shop and give your customers a good info about your goods. Today Im planning to create a site about myself. It will be just example how I am seeing a successful flash site. Im planning to do it step by step and everyone can see it online and can find some useful information for himself.

 

Site scheme

So lets start:  If Im planning to create a site about myself my goal will be to show information about myself, my experience, my examples of work and sure my contact information. I think this information is more than enough to create a site about me. So, the next step after our goal is to create a site map. Site map is a special diagram with pages which you are planning to create and the link way for this pages. Site pages will be HOME page with brief introduction, ABOUT page with info about me, PORTFOLIO page where Ill add some of my works and CONTACT page with contact form and some contact information. And we are going to be able to slide from any page to any page.

 

Technical requirements

The next question is about technical requirements. Sure, technical requirements are determined by your site audience.  Everyone who is surfing on the internet and enter your site have to be able to see it. What means that your site must look good on the most used internet browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Users who open your site should have a flash player on his computer.  Now days nearly 90% of internet users have flash players. Some users have a good internet connection speed and others not. But Im sure everyone doesnt want to wait a long time till your site opens. It means that your site and its pages must appear quickly. So the size of your .swf file is to be less than 500 kilobytes. People have different monitors. What means that the screen resolution of your site should have a good looking for any monitor or for most of them. Now most used standard resolution for monitor is 1024x768. Most users use this resolution for their monitors. Thats why I recommend to put  the  size of your site 990x700 px.

 

To be continued