Splash Pages can be a Good Addition to Your Website
The first question a beginning web developer should ask him or herself when designing a splash page for the website is not what image to use, but should a splash page be created in the first place. A splash page is “a branding page before the home page of your Web site” (O’Rourke). While this page can be good and serve as “gateways into web content” (“Internet Marketing Glossary”), one may choose not to use a splash page. Such a page can detract from the professionalism of the site; if a person or company wants to appear professional and wants the website to portray this, a splash page can ruin this desire. To seem professional, the rule in most cases is the simpler, the better, and a splash page does not simplify websites. In fact, these pages can be slow and add an additional step in the viewer’s process of arriving at the actual homepage. Designers of websites must keep in mind that viewers often decide in a matter of seconds whether they will stay at that site or not, and splash pages, if done incorrectly, can waste this time (Kyrnin).
However, splash pages can be a good addition to a website. They gain immediate responses from the viewer, which can entice the viewer to enter the site. Also, if the designer is particularly proud of some graphic, animation, or other object that he/she has created, the splash page can be a good method to display this work. Similarly, it shows the designer’s skills with technology – a splash page that includes an original animated graphic tells the viewer that the designer not only can create websites, but can create animation.
If the web developer does in fact want a splash page for the website, there are several issues to be discussed. First and foremost should be relevance. If the splash page shows a design of a political cartoon, the viewer would assume that the page is a political satire page, or at least a page related to politics. So if a viewer decides that, based on the splash page, he/she will continue on to view a site about politics, he/she would be upset and confused to see a site about guitars. The splash page sets the mood for the rest of the website, so designers should make sure that the appropriate mood is set. In a similar sense, the medium of the graphics on the splash site should be consistent with the medium of the graphics within the actual website. A website should have a consistent theme running throughout the website, as should the style of graphics. Taking this a step further, the graphics on a splash screen should be consistent with the graphics on the website it is linked to. To keep a consistent theme and feel, a designer should not abruptly change styles of pictures in the middle of website navigation and creation.
Another major issue to tackle is ease of the viewer to view the splash page. A splash page that contains large graphics, animations, or movies may alienate viewers with slow connections. Many computer users do not have the patience to sit through a graphic/animation download when they do not even know if the following site is what they want to view. Another issue that must be tackled deals with splash sites that use animations or movies. Not all browsers are compatible with animations and/or movies. Yet another set of computer users will be alienated when they cannot even see the splash page they were meant to see. A website and its splash page can be the neatest sites one’s seen, but if the computer user cannot or will not see it, the “neatness” of the site is irrelevant.
Works Cited
“Internet Marketing Glossary.” 2004. Insight Web Marketing Ltd. 19 Feb. 2004 <http://www.intermark.org/im-glossary.html#S>.
Kyrnin, Jennifer. “Grab ‘Em Quick.” Web Design/HTML. 2004. About, Inc. 19 Feb. 2004 <http://webdesign.about.com/library/weekly/aa112299.htm>.
O’Rourke, Sean. “Splash Page.” 2003. Crucial Marketing Internet Marketing Consulting. 19 Feb. 2004 <http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/splash _page/>.