A Broken Spoke is a designer of men’s clothing. I like the look of their collections, and I love the name. When I first saw the name, I read “Bespoke,” instantly giving me the impression that the clothing is custom and high quality — brilliant. However, I didn’t see anything that I wanted to buy, so I decided to book mark the site and visit later. That is when the web designer of A Broken Spoke positively prevented a future sale.
You can’t bookmark any of the pages on the A Broken Spoke website, because the website has only one page. All of the “pages” are implemented in Flash, and you can’t bookmark the inside of a Flash application. So, I will lose track of this site and probably never buy anything. Sorry John; I really like your stuff.
To understand the problem, you should know that a URL is an address on the Web, in the same way that a postal address works in the physical world. In the physical world, you want everywhere you would like to send mail to or visit to have an address, so you know where to go.
Imagine that you are invited to a party at an apartment, and the address you are given is the address of the apartment building, but the apartments are not numbered. People and mail can get to the building, but they can’t easily get to the apartments. You have to direct the party goers with extra directions like “Go up to the third floor, turn right and knock on the third door to the left.” That is much less efficient than “Go to apartment #307.”
A Flash application has an address for the main application, but it does not have an address for the “pages” inside the application. So, for the A Broken Spoke site, if I wanted to tell you about a product I really love, I’d have to direct you to it by saying:
Visit http://www.abrokenspoke.com/. Click on “Collections” in the top menu bar, then hover your mouse over the third picture down in the right column.
Using Flash for you website means that your customers will not share links to your products with their friends. No “Tell A Friend” for you! Even worse, if a product does not have an address on the web Google can’t find it, and your customers can’t search for it.
For an example of a site that does it right, visit Charmoné Shoes. Here is a link to a specific product, something you can’t do at A Broken Spoke: Star Anise – Espresso.
Fortunately, A Broken Spoke does have an etsy store, which does not cripple consumers with Flash.
After you’ve designed and manufactured the product, be sure your customers can find the product on the web, and do understand how consumers use the web. Allowing your customers to find your products with search engines and allowing them to share links with each other are critical aspects of a successful web strategy.
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