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Splash pages are extinct.

This is your splash page

For most cases, they shouldn't even exist in the first place.

The exceptions are obvious:

• When you don't really have any other content to display, and the splash page IS your website.
• When you are legally required to confirm the user's identity, age, purpose of visit, etc., e.g. over 18 sites.
• When you have one very important message to get across, and the rest of your website is of diminished importance, i.e. business closing notices.

You get the idea: splash pages have very specific purposes. However, for the most part, people have them for absurd reasons:

• Some artists and creative types believe it is the best way to display their creativity - this is kind of reasonable and sort of okay.
• Many believe splash pages are impressive, especially the Flash animated ones - this is not an okay reason to have a splash page.
• Even more believe splash pages will make the user want to engage the website even more - this is simply not true.

You are actively stopping the user from accessing your website

Forget engaging the user - splash pages actually disengage any interested parties. An unnecessary splash page is one extra step that the user has to go through to view your main content:

• It slows the user down by xseconds:
  • Where x = y + z
  • y is the time it takes for the user's browser to download the splash page - often lengthy, given the size of some impressive-looking, animated splash pages and the lack of speedy internet connection in the developing countries. It can get even longer for the sites that FORCE you to sit through a certain animation or movie before
  • And z is the time it takes for the user to figure out what to do after the splash page loads. If you've seen those splash pages with links that took you half a minute to locate, you'd understand that z is a pretty significant variable.
  • Oh, and don't forget the additional time that would be necessary to download the appropriate plugins before your splash page can be displayed.
• People just don't have time to go through the above exercise to find out what exactly your site has for them. When was the last time you looked at just one website and waited patiently for it to load? Most people will switch to other websites and forget yours while it is taking its own sweet time loading.
• Since splash pages don't have any content, search engines tend to not index them. This either means they will link directly to your content pages, making your splash page irrelevant, or, worse, if they cannot "reach" the content pages from your fancy all-Flash splash page, they will not link to you at all, making your entire website ineffective.

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