With approximately 25 per cent of small business websites using at least some elements of Flash in their website it could cost an average of £1,000 per site to upgrade. So if even half of the UK’s 4.5 million SMEs have a website, that’s a potential cost to the SME community of over £500 million.
Chris Winstanley from SME website building experts, BaseKit, explains the implications for small businesses: “Adobe ending its support for Mobile Flash has huge implications for the SME community. In the short term, this will affect all small businesses that receive a lot of traffic to their website or generate online sales from mobile and tablet devices.
Mobile has been an important source of lead generation and sales for many small businesses and its growth is set to continue, with mobile search likely to account for nearly 20 per cent of all search queries by 2012. That’s an enormous amount of traffic that SMEs cannot afford to miss out on.”
“Although initially only affecting mobile devices, it is likely that Adobe will eventually phase out Flash support completely, a serious consideration for any SME with a Flash-based website or uses elements of Flash in their site, such as video players, animations and advertising. We advise any organisation looking at investing in a new website, or redesigning an existing one, to prepare for a future without Flash and avoid the costs of having to tear up their site and start again.
“Flash’s natural successor is much championed HTML5, a new breed of website programming language that gives all the benefits of Flash without its significant drawbacks. Apple chose HTML5 as long ago as 2007 by choosing to exclude Flash from its iPhone, iPod and iPad range of products.
