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Splash pages

Have you come across a useful splash page lately?
I haven't for a long time - so I take the courrage to say - there are none. You can hardly find a website with a splash page which is there for a good reason.
In my opinion any information could also go either on the homepage or in a seperate section on the actual website, this saves your user one click and quite often also the time it takes to download a fancy flash movie.

And there is another big disadvantage to many splash pages - they appear to be empty if a search engines looks at it.

The following options for a splash page come in my mind:

• Choice of language
  In many cases, this is not enough reason to create an additional page and should rather be integrated into the main site.
• Introduction movie / creative experience /special features
  Think twice - do you really want your users to have to "skip intro" or watch this every time they come to your site to search for the latest news or your contact details?

If you would like to show off some work or strongly feature an event , piece of artwork .... wouldn't this find a better place within the site or in a playground section? In the end - you want your users to come back to your site and explore it more than once. And in this case the new and exciting flash or image based splash page quickly becomes a rather annoying feature which prevents the user from doing what he actually came for - to research information.

In case you know a website which has a good and useful splash screen you enjoy watching - please let us know.

E-Mail:: info@tetridia.com