Big Communications Abandons Flash for Wordpress on Agency Site
Until recently, you couldn’t find a website for an ad agency that wasn’t 100% Flash. Coincidentally, it was hard to find many ad agencies through search engines. You literally had to know the agency’s web address because search engines like Google couldn’t “crawl” Flash content. And the list of cons to Flash goes far beyond search engine optimization. Flash can’t be viewed on most cell phone browsers. It’s difficult to update, requiring a Flash expert to make even basic text or image changes.
Still agencies held onto Flash. It gave their creatives print-like control. Flash allowed them to use the fonts from their print campaigns so they wouldn’t be limited to web-safe fonts. Never mind that those fonts were set as mathematical paths in a way that even the mighty Google couldn’t read as text.
Flash gave the creatives the power to marry music and animation with their content and put their video production skills on display through forced 30-second intros, even if agency website visitors just needed a phone number and address.
Today, it’s good to see usability taking its rightful place in the agency website discussion. We see more sites with Flash components and some loosening of the reins. We see agency blogs and browser friendly scripts running portfolios. And we see an acknowledgment of alternative browsers thanks to the iPhone.
Big Communications Friday launched a Flash-free website. The folks at Big chose the open source Wordpress platform to enable non-technical team members to update the site. Wordpress, in spite of thousands of installations including the New York Times, Ford, Harvard, and this humble site may be one of the web’s best kept secrets.
Big, in its site announcement, points out that Wordpress is iPhone friendly out of the box. I dig their J-query portfolio and Thickbox pop-up windows. Big’s creatives were even willing to give up higher definition Vimeo videos in favor of the lower res (but better supported) YouTube platform. The “look at me orange” and red pop off the otherwise monochromatic page.
The site’s navigation is a bit idiosyncratic. Big chose to use “Beliefs,” “Work,” “Believers” and “Story” in lieu of the more traditional “Our philosophy,” “Portfolio,” “Clients,” and “About Us.” Naming conventions aside, the separation of the two internally focused pages is a bit confusing. It’s also a little odd that the header images are so varied, but absent altogether on the “blog,” “news” and “contact” pages.
Some cross links from the “Work” page to the testimonials and case studies would be welcome. The watermarked logos on the “Believers” page are begging for some interactivity, even if it’s just to colorize them on mouse-over and link to the case studies. To round out all nit-picking, we’d throw in bigger or more refined thumbnails in the portfolio preview, a bright orange Big favicon and a minimalist print style sheet.
Overall, Big’s effort is one giant step for local ad agencies. We look forward to seeing the site change often with updates from the entire Big team.