One of the big things today is audio on web sites. Seems like everybody is getting into the game of having their sales message blasted out to the public so that everybody within a 20 block radius
can hear it. While I’m not condemning the use of audio on sites, I think we have to take a good hard, long look at how it is used and how we can use it more effectively. This article is going to look at this issue and hopefully give you a few things to consider.
First of all, audio is not meant to be an alternative to written text. People with hearing problems are not going to enjoy struggling with trying to listen to your sales pitch. They are much more likely to read
your message than to listen to it. So if you are going to have an audio message, a text version of it should also appear on the page as well. This will keep everybody happy.
But the bigger problem with audio is not so much whether or not you should have it on your page, but whether or not it should begin playing the second your visitor hits that page. This is where people
can’t seem to agree on much of anything. So, I’m going to throw my two cents in the ring here. You can dismiss what I have to say if you like, but I think I speak for a vast majority of people with what I have
to say, and that is this.
Fine, you want your audio on your site? Great! Just don’t force it down our throats or into our ears as the case may be. Not everybody wants to hear your bellowing voice the second they reach your page,
and this can be for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is one that I am going to describe below.
Not everybody in this world lives in the same time zone. Aside from that, people have all different hours of the day and night where they even go to web sites. Plus, not everybody’s computer is out of ear shot
of the rest of the house. True story! A man gets up at 6 AM, quietly as not to disturb his
newborn son who is in the bed next to him. He manages to get up and not wake the son. He turns on the computer and goes to his emails. He finds a site that he wants to check out. He clicks on the link and the first thing he hears is this…
“You’ve just made the best decision of your life…”
The message is bellowing out of the speakers at a volume that could shatter glass. Seconds later, the son wakes up crying like a banshee. The man begins to curse at the site and swears never to go to it again. If you think this doesn’t happen often, think again.
My point is this. If you want to have audio on your site, fine. But don’t set it to auto play. If you want people to know it’s there, fine. Put up big billboards pointing to the audio controls if you want with a big
“Click Here” hovering over it like a crow, but please give people the option of whether or not they want to listen to it.
You’ll lose less customers that way.
