Splash pages
Splash pages, if you are unfamiliar with the term, are pages displaying a logo or branding imagery for a site. They are intended to be the first page you hit when you visit the site. Here is an example, the splash page of the GFT site. The GFT’s site design has changed and it no longer uses a splash screen; you can still see the old design, though, courtesy of the WaybackMachine.
Some people really hate splash pages. Jakob Nielsen, never one to understate, calls them an early sin of abusive Web design
and notes that most professional sites no longer use them. Or perhaps I should say “claims” since I’m certainly still coming across plenty of them. That isn’t his strongest word on the subject: he also said splash pages are a sure sign of bad Web design.
It is true that if you look at the really successful sites — Amazon, say, or Yahoo! — there is no splash page. The “front page” is a lot more than decorative, giving immediate access to all of the site’s major sections. There are no fancy graphics, no animations, no welcome messages.
On the other hand, you might say, perhaps they don’t need a splash page to emphasise their branding, since even people who have never dipped a toe in the Net let alone surfed it have heard of both Yahoo! and Amazon. Maybe less well-known companies benefit from having a page devoted solely to pushing their brand image.
Why, though, do some Net gurus dislike splash pages so intensely? There seem to be two basic reasons, one practical and one theoretical.
The theoretical objection is that splash pages betray a misunderstanding of the way the Web functions. It assumes that users will always turn up at the front door, so to speak. Perhaps there is an assumption that users will follow a linear path through the site. Unfortunately, the Web doesn't work like that: a user is as likely to arrive at a page deep within a site as at the splash page, whether through following a hyperlink or through typing a URL in the address bar. They may never even know you have a splash page. There is no point in having an ‘entry page’ if you cannot guarantee people will enter that way!
Against that, though, it has to be said that users frequently do arrive at the front door — many links take the surfer to the target site’s root URL. If I were providing a list of links relating to Glasgow, I would very likely use the same URL for the GFT that I did in the earlier example.
The practical objection is that splash pages waste bandwidth, and force users to wait for the page to load before they can proceed to the rest of the site. Certainly, a large splash page (in terms of bytes) can be irritating, expecially since the user may have to wait for the page to complete loading before knowing what to do to carry on into the site. Splash pages using Flash and Shockwave are especially bad in this respect.
Plain HTML pages should not cause such major problems — if they do, then the designer needs to look hard at the way graphics are used. When done properly, there is no reason why a splash page should take a long time to load. The GFT’s page loaded promptly enough, didn’t it?
I think that splash pages are best seen as being analogues of a book’s cover, or perhaps a film’s title sequence. The analogy breaks down, of course, in that using a Web site is not necessarily a linear experience. (Neither need a book be, of course — consider the number of people who reportedly read the end of a novel before the beginning!) However, it seems to me that splash pages do serve a similar function: they establish an identity for the site, set a mood. The user may ignore it, going straight through to the content, just as a reader may take a book from a shelf an leaf through it without once looking at the cover.
Go back to that GFT page. That page immediately gives an impression of the place, of its aspirations and the image it wishes to project. You already have an idea what you will find inside. How is this different from the effect of the cover of a book?
One site I designed for a Druid group uses a splash page — partly to give a feel for the subject matter, partly to show off the artwork used on the splash page. I think it works well on both counts, though you may disagree. [Note: The Caer Clud site has been redesigned, and the front page is no longer really a splash page as such; it retains, however, much of the look of the old splash page.] That design has been changed and no longer resembles the old one with the splash page. Here is a screenshot of the original design (reduced in size).
If a splash page loads quickly it can add to the experience of the site. Often when I visit a site with an attractive splash page, I pause to look at it, already getting an idea about the site….
Well, maybe that’s just me.
Of course, the splash page should have some connection with the rest of the site. There is no point in establishing an identity in a splash page then discarding that as soon as you get into the site.
Most importantly, the splash page, if used, should not be devoid of information. There are sites where you can stare at the splash page as much as you want and you will never guess what the site is about, what the company does. (In some of these cases you can be none the wiser after visiting the whole site.)
On the whole, I can’t work up any great ire against splash pages per se, as distinct from bloated Shockwave-dependent monstrosities which take forever to load and shut out users who don’t have the plug-in. Some practical points to bear in mind:
- I’ve said it before: make it small enough to load quickly. There may be times when an 800kb Shockwave intro is necessary — but I have never yet encountered one. You may have a T1 connection, but there are plenty of people using 56k and slower modem connections. Making them wait for minute after minute for your masterpiece to load wins you no friends.
- Don’t make a splash page your site’s home page. A user should have to visit it once only — none of the links within the site should lead back to it, and it is their choice if they come back to it on a subsequent visit.
- How do the users get into the site from the splash page? If you must use a Shockwave animation, you need to provide a text link to bypass it. In fact, that is a good idea even if the splash page consists of nothing more than one reasonably quick-loading graphic. Anyone not interested can then skip quickly to the site’s content.
- Never bury the “skip intro” option within a Shockwave or Flash animation — anyone without the plug-in is then shut out of the site; the same goes for putting it in an image map.
- If you use the words “click to enter” or some variant, make sure that clicking on those words works!
- If you are using a text link to the rest of the site, make sure it is visible and, especially, don’t use DHTML trickery to hide the link unless the user happens to roll the cursor over a particular part of the page!
- Don’t tell the user they need browser X to view the site. For one thing, it often isn’t true. When it is, it suggests the designer is either lazy or doesn’t really know his or her stuff. In particular, sooner or later someone will come along with a version of browser X you hadn’t considered and your site will break in it — your statement that the site works in browser X really makes you look a twat. Even worse is the site which says, you need browser X and here is a link for you to get it! Who the hell are you to tell me to download software to view your site?
- The worst sin of a splash page, though — worse even than downloading a vast Shockwave animation with no “skip intro” link, worse than pushing your favourite browser, worse than providing confusing navigation — is to demand that the user change system settings to view the page. My impression is this is happening less frequently than it used to, but frankly once is once too often. People come to Web pages with all sorts of screen resolutions, and there is no point whining about it. It certainly does not excuse you writing a page for, say, 800x600 displays and insisting that the user change settings to that. Leaving aside the fact that plenty of users have no idea how to change screen resolution, and that plenty more are actually not able to change screen resolution, it’s just damn rude. I run my machine at a resolution that suits me. You have no business demanding I change it to accommodate your failings as a web designer.
- One final little point about splash pages: don’t welcome people to your site. If a site is on the Web, it is there to be visited. Of course people are welcome at it. It may seem like a little bit of politeness, but after seeing ten such welcomes in a row the user starts to mutter, “Yeah, yeah, I know, get on with it!” — not the best from of mind for whatever message you want to get over.
© DC 2000, 2001, 2005. All rights reserved.
