Gas Price Increase Best Thing To Happen To Internet Sales?

Here in Phoenix, Arizona gas prices are $3.60 per gallon and from what I hear from the media, that's the $0.16 cheaper than the National Average! So what is that doing for businesses? If it cost more to get to a store than it does to buy something from the store, will that hurt business? Of course!

Over the last year, I have seen an incredible amount of businesses having a new website design or an e-commerce web site to sell their products, and why shouldn't they? The benefits of having an online store built over a "brick and mortar" are huge! Less in-house inventory, no utilities bill, not worrying about spending $100 a week in gas to drive to work, less overhead cost, the list goes on... But the biggest benefit to having a company website designed or an online shopping cart / store is that there really is no hours of operation... the internet is open 24/7/365 (366 this year haha)

Even here in Phoenix, you go online to Safeway.com and do your grocery shopping online and have it delivered! How cool is that?

In my opinion, I think that the more and more cost of living goes up (gas, food, utilities, mortgage, etc..), the more people (and companies) are going to turn to the internet to live. That's just my thought...

The Pros & Cons to Pure Flash Websites

Over the last few years, there has always been the dispute between website designers and clients on websites developed completely in Flash. While they are definitely visually eye catching, they also have a strong negative effect.

Some Pros of having a Flash Website Design:

• Eye catching
• Interactive
• Easy to integrate certain features such as sound loops
• Reasonably Fast Loading
  

Some Cons of having a Flash Website Design:

• NOT Search Engine Friendly. Search engine bots are unable to view the text within a flash website. This is by far the most crucial.
• Difficult to update. Whenever there is an update, the original source file (.fla) needs to be edited.
• Sometimes not user friendly and difficult to navigate.
• Browser compatibility issues - Not all users have flash installed in their browser. If flash is not installed, your site will not be displayed.
• Longer time to develop.

There is a perfect median to having Flash in a website by integrating it into the web page itself as opposed to creating a strictly Flash website. This way, the website can have the same eye candy but at the same time, be search engine friendly and user friendly.