Designing websites which work for the widest possible proportion of your target market should be the aim of every web designer. Multimedia functionality helps to engage users but we’ve seen how Flash animation and navigation is poor in terms of accessibility and can diminish SEO results. So how can we cater for everyone. Well, research shows that a website that we create which can make all users happy. A usable website is good for SEO because it helps to create repeat visitors. Task completion times are shorter which decreases time on site which, it could be argued, is poor in terms of cold, hard SEO metrics. But if we were to take this nonsensical view then we wouldn’t be considering the bigger picture. That is why we should consider all elements of a web presence and look at the end results. Conversions are all that really matters. Web traffic is just that. Traffic.

Ultimately, all website design decision must be justified by mapping back to business objectives. Will our stakeholders like it? Will our customers like it? These are the pertinent questions.