How a Splash Page May Hurt Your Website

In my previous post I talked about the disconnect between most web visitors perception of a Splash Page and some website owners insistence upon having one.

Today I want to touch on some reasons why a Splash Page may hurt your website:

Your Web Visitors Don't Care

A web visitor will usually come to your site for some information or hopefully to make a purchase.  By having the Home Page of a website be a intro Splash Page, you are hindering the visitors experience.  This is a kin to walking into a major department store and being forced to stop and watch a 10-20 second video before you can enter the store. 

Your Home Page is the most important page on your website.  In my opinion, having a Splash Page gives a visitor a bad first impression of your site.  This page screams ME, ME, ME instead of focusing the attention on the visitors needs.

Fortunately most Splash Pages come with a Skip Intro link so you can bypass the video.  But why do you want to spend the money on creating a Splash Page when most visitors will become annoyed and click the Skip Intro link as fast as they can?

Reduction In Search Engine Rankings

Search Engines (SE) place an increased emphasis on the Home Page of a website.  By having a Splash Page be the official Home Page this in effect reduces the importance of your true Home Page.

A good Home Page will act as sort of a table of contents for your site containing most of your main keyword phrases.  The Slash Page is in essence a big graphic advertisement with virtually no text for the SE to index.

Most external links to a website will be to the Home Page.  It makes no sense from a linking strategy point of view to waste these valuable links to a Splash Page.  Links from external websites will be more effective if they point to the real content and not to an advertisement.

Site Performance Problems

There are still a good percentage of people who access the Internet with a dial-up service.  Admittedly this is becoming less of an issue, but downloading a large Splash Page can really affect a visitor's experience when using a low bandwidth connection.  You will experience a larger than normal bailout from a website among these visitors.

In conclusion, I don't want to trash all Splash Pages, but for the majority of small to medium business owners, a Splash Page is an unnecessary expense and will cause unwanted visitor frustrations.

The Great Spalsh Page Disconnect

I am not a fan of Splash intro pages.

These Splash intro pages are usually a Flash animation that (1) makes you wait for it to download and (2) holds you captive for 10, 20 or more seconds before you are invited into the website to find the information that you were initially interested in.  I can't click the Skip Intro link fast enough.

I continually read different articles and usability studies that rate Splash pages as a major annoyance to web visitors.  A recent article from Silicon Cloud called 12 ways to Irritate Your Visitors lists Splash pages as their #8 annoyance.

But I still get prospects coming to my web development business requesting a Splash intro page for their site.

Why is this?  Do they think it's cool?  Do they think it's part of the corporate branding process?  Do they have too much money to spend?  I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this topic.

It's funny, when I ask the prospect when they are the surfer, do they wait and watch the animation or do they head for the Skip Intro link.  More times than not, they click the link.

In my next post, I present some solid business reasons why a Splash intro page is hurting your web site.