Put your best face on your website with Flash

Your agent website needs to convey information and impressions visually.  Homebuyers and sellers looking for a listing agent can see a static list of properties in the local paper.  When they browse the Web, they need to be reeled in by a visual, interactive experience.  Your website needs to tell them that you take technology seriously, and that the “face” you put on the Internet reflects you as an agent: professional, high-quality and attractive.

More practically speaking, you have a very limited amount of time to grab a web visitor’s attention.  The need to present information and impressions in an attractive, interactive way and in a short time led to the development, years ago, of Flash programming.  But for years Flash was hamstrung by the size of Flash files – which resulted in much slower downloads – and the fact that you needed a special software program on your computer to see and hear Flash files.

With Agent XSites, it’s not that way anymore.  But a generation ago – in Internet Time – using Flash animation on a website was regarded as ostentatious, a waste of bandwidth and time, something that kept the web visitor from getting to the important parts of the site.  And not too many years ago, the use of digital pictures on the Web was discouraged because producing them was too complicated, they added too much download time and a were poor substitute for good old text.

Those days are long gone.  But you wouldn’t know it from the (un)availability of Flash themes and features on agent websites other than a la mode’s Agent XSites.

Why isn’t anyone but a la mode’s Agent XSites offering Flash intros, Flash-based lead generation forms, Flash-components for featured listings, full Flash listings, Flash headers, Flash navigation, and Flash image tours?  Because using Flash correctly is very difficult and very expensive.  A custom designer would charge thousands for all those rich, attractive Flash features on your website.  And our competitors aren’t willing to invest in doing it well.

Agent XSites have all these things included with your one, single, low annual fee.  On your Agent XSite, Flash loads fast, and more clearly.  Too many web design companies are still “in the box” when it comes to Flash’s interactivity and rich presentation.  They’ve been told for so long that Flash is bad, that they haven’t figured out how to make it good:

• Flash is an unparalleled way to enhance visitor experience, and to provide elements such as animation, sound and interactivity that just cannot be easily achieved with an HTML website.
• Flash design software provides designers with a great deal of control over the final product, and enables the creation of features and environments that are difficult or impossible to reproduce in a static web site.
• All the major web browsers now ship with a flash plug-in already installed, and so a growing number of computers are equipped to view these files.  No more hiding behind the excuse that many visitors won’t be able to experience Flash.
• And Flash websites today can be built and optimized to have small file sizes and fast download times.

Not taking advantage of Flash on your agent website is like not using digital pictures because the file size and download time is too big and the technology for creating and storing them too complicated.  Would you buy that if a web design company told you that today, as opposed to five years ago?  If not, you shouldn’t accept old, discarded excuses for not having a Flash enhanced website.  Fully 98 percent of web browsers today have the ability to view Flash, and if your agent website is not giving it to them, you’re missing out.