Gone Are the Days of Splash Pages

What are splash pages? Splash pages are generally intro web pages that display a welcome message, possibly a Flash movie or company logo. Most of these pages say very little other than "ENTER" or a list of links that take you into the main web site.

In 1994 when we first started designing web sites and templates, splash pages were the rage and every site had one. If you were not online at that time or were not into the arena of web design, then you may not remember the Stone Age of Web Design. At that time the Internet was mostly text and browsers were just beginning to have the capability to render graphics. So of course every site was jumping into the trendy eye-candy effect. However, these days eye-candy web sites are not the #1 concern for a web designer or even in the top five.

Today's top five web designer concerns are:
1. page load speed
2. effective, quick navigation
3. user friendly (usability for a diversified audience)
4. professional layout/design
5. search engine optimization

Think for a moment about the usefulness of a splash page. Ask yourself these questions:
* What do they really do? Do they have a function?
* Does it take the splash page with the large company logo, welcome message or Flash movie longer than 5 seconds to load on a 56K dialup modem?
* Can the splash page be eliminated without depriving the site visitors with meaningful or vital information?

Our answers to these questions will likely match yours in most cases and are as follows:
* Nothing. 99% of the time, No.
* Yes.
* Yes.

Ouch! That sounds a little harsh, we know. But what about all those sites out there that have splash pages? Why shouldn't you have one too? After all, they are pretty cool looking, right? If the splash page has no function it forces your site visitors to click one more time to get to the information they came there for. Always design your site so that your visitors do not have to click too deep. That one extra click could cost you a sale. The same is true if your visitors have to wait too long for that extra-click splash page to load. They will leave; we guarantee it. And lastly, most information on a splash page can be placed on the main template page: welcome message or slogan, company logo, or list of links without the loss of vital information for your visitors. So we ask you, why would you want to clutter your website with something that has no function? If you were a jeweler, for example, wouldn't it be similar to placing a photo of a banana on your site? What's the point of it, right? Your site visitors would say to themselves, "What's that banana for?". Trust us when we say that when they see a splash page they are saying to themselves, "Oh, just let me in, okay?!"

We invite you to do a little research. What types of sites do and do not have splash pages? Listed below is our summation and it is what you will likely find, but we challenge you to prove us wrong. Of course there is a 1% chance you will find a site that does effectively use a splash page, such as Google. What? Google?! Yes. You could theoretically consider Google's homepage as a splash page, but the answers to the three questions above would be exactly the opposite. It has a function in that it offers the visitors to search on a keyword, it does not take long to load, and it could not be eliminated without depriving the visitor of meaningful and vital information. AND Google is a BIG BOY, people will return to it time and time again so they can get away with this technique because their method does have a function and people can effectively get information quickly. After all, the majority of folks who visit Google go there to search for keywords! So in this case, the splash feature is highly effective. In your research we believe you will also find that web design used for the majority of sites with effective layouts contain a minimal amount of graphics and generally displays the company logo in a narrow band at the very top. This seems to be the trend today; quite the opposite of that which was seen in 1996 with splash pages containing heavy, eye-candy graphics.

Sites that generally use splash pages:
* newbie web designers and webmasters who want folks to know they know how to create a splash page
* web designers who cannot get passed the idea that this old trend died a long time ago, and/or do not keep up with today's web design concerns/techniques which has a big impact on their clients' websites
* graphic designers who's main objective is to show off their eye-candy illustrations
* web site owners who had a newbie web designer, misinformed or uneducated web designer, or graphic designer create their site for them

Related Article: "Cut the Fat in Your Web Pages"