Thinking Of Putting Audio On Your Web Site?

Here are some things you want to keep in mind so that you increase sales, not scare them away...

The longer you are doing business online, the easier it is to spot trends of the moment. At the time of this article, the current trend is "adding audio" to your website.

After reading some of the sales letters on some of these product's sites, you would think that this is a new concept. Its not.

What they have managed to do is put it in a "pretty package" complete with a few marketing twists on it. I'm not saying they are a bad thing, but you should definitely track your results to see if they work for you.

Just Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should

Be careful not to fall into "the latest so it must be the greatest" line of thinking.

Before this latest audio popularity there was the "Flash phase". That is, people were finally figured out how to create Flash websites so a lot of people started doing it.

A lot of those people never considered the possible harm it was doing to their site with the search engines. A flash site to a search engine might as well been a blank page. Not to mention some of the navigation nightmares that can go along with a Flash site.

So should you put audio on a page?

There is no right or wrong answer. Simply make sure you pay attention to the results and think it all of the way through.

I have experimented with it a few different times and it has showed some promise. I am still working out the most effective way to do it for increased sales.

Some Do's And Don't Of Audio On Your Site

If you track back the first use of audio on site, it is probably as background music.

These were generally .midi music files that would play some elevator music version of "Feelings" while you were trying to look at a web page.

By some strange coincidence, these same sites also tended to have horrendous background images on their site. It made it not only obnoxious to listen to but also impossible to read the text.

In case you haven't seen one of these sites lately, I dug one up for you to bring back some memories. Make sure you give a moment or two to load...:

http://www.discoverynet.com/~ajsnead/enter.html

My apologies to the site owner...

Here's some things to keep in mind with music on your site:

• DO realize that most people don't want to hear music on a website
• DON'T have it play automatically as soon as they get to your site
• DO provide controls so at least they can stop it if they wish
• DON"T forget the music is probably a fairly decent sized file and will make your page load slower if it is not "streaming" audio

You need to keep in mind also that a lot of these audio effects usually need some sort of "plug in" software in order to be heard. In the case of Flash files, most computers already have the Macromedia flash plug in. Flash is close enough to be standard that you may not worry about it. I would provide a link to download the flash player just in case though.

Some of the other methods of playing sound require some obscure plug in to be downloaded and installed. To expect visitors to your site to have to do this to listen to audio on your site is absolutely absurd.

The Bottom Line

Whether you put audio on your site is up to you but you need to track your results. Stick with standard methods if you are planning on doing it and make it optional, not mandatory.