Why it's Increasingly Important to Provide Flash Alternatives

With an increasing number of mobile web visitors its important to make sure the mobile experience is as good as the desktop experience. With a number of smart phones including the iPhone not supporting Abobe's Flash technology it's essential to provide an alternative.

A good example is British Supermarket chain Morrisons. My task was to find the opening times of my local store, I achieved this quickly however the bulk of the main page was not viewable because no alternative to Flash was provided.

Looking at the same page through a desktop browser this section provides latest offers.

Even though my goal in visiting the site was not to see the latest offers I still had the intention of visiting a local store where I may have been influenced by what I had seen on the website.

By not providing a Flash alternative Morrisons are missing out on one of their top conversion points - the main banner on the front page of their website - i.e. the section that the majority of the visitors will first see.

Alternatives would be very easy to implement - an image of offers could be displayed instead of the message telling me to install Flash or the Flash section could be recreated using JavaScript.