The Pros and Cons of Using Splash Pages in Website Design
What are Splash Pages?
Splash pages, for those unfamiliar with the term, are introductory pages a user must visit before being directed to a website’s home page. They are often devoid of any meaningful content and may feature elegant graphics or flash animations. Though there are a few marginal benefits to using splash pages, in general, they will often deter more users than they will attract, and we at Niche Marketing PR do not use them in the creation of our clients’ websites.
Pros of Using Splash Pages
- A splash page can function as an advertisement for the company whose website a user is about to enter.
- Splash pages can offer customized versions of websites such as selecting a language and level of site complexity depending on a user’s Internet bandwidth.
Cons of Using Splash Pages
- Prospective customers tend to hate them because they take a long time to load and offer no useful information
- Because splash pages offer no useful information, search engines do not rank them very high, and they can bring your entire site’s search engine ranking down.
- It is not always obvious where a user should click to enter the “real” website, and you may lose visitors as a result of this confusion.
- Splash pages may not always work correctly on all computers and all operating systems, leaving some potential visitors without a way to view your website.