- Video
Is Webflow the new Flash website?
Flash websites died for a reason. Now they're back, dressed up as Webflow.
▶Play the video: Is Webflow the new Flash website?Flash websites looked brilliant. As a designer, I loved them. They also never served the client. They were built to win awards, so agencies could put an award-winning badge on their own website while the client paid multiples of thousands of pounds. They weren’t responsive. They weren’t accessible. Steve Jobs killed them with an iPhone update, and there was a reason.
Now I’m seeing the same thing again, masquerading as a real website. The Webflow website.
The internet started as text and hyperlinks. It was there to share information, and despite TikTok, it still is. Anything that gets in the way of that, a flashy website or a scroll that stops you finding what you came for, makes the internet less useful.
A business website has one job. Be useful. If it isn’t, nobody visits. If nobody visits, there’s no point to it, and you might as well delete it and just have a Facebook page.
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Read the full transcript
What we're seeing again is a rise of the Flash website. There's a reason Steve Jobs killed the Flash website by making that update to iPhones. Flash websites weren't serving the internet in any way. They looked cool. God, god damn, they looked cool.
And I love looking at them as a designer from a designer perspective as me, but as a thing that served clients, they never served clients. They were purely designed to get awards. They were purely designed for design agencies to win awards. So then they could get an award-winning website, an award-winning designer logo on their website at the expense of the client spending multiples and multiples and multiples of thousands of pounds. They weren't responsive.
They weren't accessible. They didn't work in any way. And that's why they died. Now what we're seeing is a new rise of that flash website again, but it's masquerading as a real website, which is a Webflow website. If we go right back to the beginning of the internet, the internet was full of just text and hyperlinks.
That was the purpose of the internet to share information as a research tool. And that's still to this day, despite the fact that everyone's using TikTok, despite the fact that people are watching videos like this, the primary reason for the internet is to share information. And any barriers that we put in place of that, be it a fancy flashing website or a scroll that doesn't allow you to find the information you want to find, puts a blocker in the way and stops the internet from being useful. And that's ultimately what the internet is about, being useful. And that's ultimately what your business website should be about, being useful.
Because when it isn't useful anymore, there's no reason for it. And if there's no reason for it, people don't visit it. And if people won't visit it, there's no purpose for it. And you might as well delete the website and not have a website, just have a Facebook page. [sighs and gasps] That was a bit of a rant, wasn't it?