Why You Should Avoid Background Music on Your Website

Last Updated on Thursday, 15 January 2009 13:11 Written by Spencer Thornock Thursday, 15 January 2009 12:30

Don’t put background music on your website. If you want a professional website that has high traffic and retains visitors, it’s a good rule of thumb to stick with. There are always rare exceptions (which I will list later), but for the most part, you should take this small tid-bit of wisdom to heart.

Here are the reasons why:

1. Creditability - There are certain hallmarks that newbie website builders cannot help but fall for. Background music on a website is one of them. Unless your selling music or music services, having background music play on your website makes it seem unprofessional. This lowers your websites credibility, and thus you lose retentions of your visitors. People are not visiting your website to listen to music… they are probably there to find information. Think about it… does Google, Yahoo, Newsweek, Sprint, or Amazon play music on their websites? Do any ‘professional’ or ‘creditable’ websites you know of play music? Now think back to all the website that you know of that DO play background music… how creditable did they look? Did most of them look like a first grader designed them? Did it look like a MySpace website? How creditable are MySpace websites? Would you trust content on websites like these? Hmmmm.

2. Bandwidth - Streaming a full version of a song (4-5 minutes) as a background music for your website takes up too many resources. That being said, if your website is super slow to load and ‘choppy’ to visitors with slower connections, I can pretty much guarantee you won’t have a lot of returning visitors. Not to mention the fact that every time you refresh or load a new page, the song starts over - super annoying.

3. Repeating Music - Many people will play smaller segment of background music that loop so as to minimize load times to their websites. If anyone comes to your website and spends any amount of respectable time there, it won’t take long before they go crazy listening to a 15-20 second long song segment loop a thousand times. If you ‘play that funky music’… your going to have visitors leaving your website in droves.

4. Taste In Music - Everyone has different tastes in music. What songs you like, others may detest. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe not everyone loves Barry Manalo as much as you do, but the last thing you want to do is drive people away before they even look at your content.

5. Music Already Playing - Now days, people spend a lot of time on their computers. Because of this, they often have music playing from Cd’s, MP3s, Internet radio, etc. on their computer to help pass the time. How annoying is it when you visit a website and it starts playing music that mixes in with your music? Nothing fun about trying to listen to two tracks at the same time. The quick fix will be to leave your website.

6. Public Computers - Nothing like being at work and hitting a website that all of a sudden starts blaring ‘The Pina Colada Song’ at 300 decibels. It’s highly unlikely you will get many return visitors if half of them are out on the streets looking for a new jobs.

7. Legal Issues - Do you have the legal right to broadcast the song you want play as background music? You might get away with it for a while if you don’t, but if you plan on your website ever having any amount of significant traffic, be warned. The more popular your website, the more likely you will get noticed playing songs illegally. Litigation, fines, and law suites are no fun.

8. Browser Compatibility - Not every browser is capable of playing every type of music file. Having background music on your website comes with the risk that some of your users may have older browsers that lock up when the music is attempting to upload or play.

Exceptions

There always exceptions to every rule. Here are a few cases when playing background music would be considered acceptable.

1. Musicians And Bands - If your a musician or in a band and are creating a website about your work, then it would only be reasonable to have some of your songs playing in the background.

2. Establishments And Events That Revolve Around Music - Dance clubs, bars, concerts, etc. Playing music might help set the mood of what to expect at your establishment or event.

3. Personal Websites - Personal websites are off the table. Express yourself freely with whatever song you like if this is what you wish to do.

If you feel its appropriate to play background music on your website, be sure to display PLAY, PAUSE, and VOLUME controls one your website in plain view so that people can have the option to turn it off or lower the volume. You might also consider not having any music play upon page load, but instead, offering the option for them to play it if they want to hear it.

Many website builders allow users to insert third party music player objects into your website with ease. They provide code for you to copy and paste into whatever web pages your desire to have music on. All that is usually required is that you have the music file uploaded someplace, and then alter the destination URL in the code to point to it.

Doodlekit’s free website maker is a great online tool that allows you to do all this when building a website.

Heath Huffman is the co-owner of Doodlekit - a free website builder. He has been doing web design and development since 1995. He specializes in website design, Photoshop, W3C compliant HTML, XHTML and CSS. Heath has helped develop large corporate websites for companies such as Pfizer, Merck & Sprint. Visit his blog website - Heathbits - for more information.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Heath_Huffman

Your Guide to Designing a Profitable Website

Last Updated on Thursday, 15 January 2009 13:11 Written by Spencer Thornock Thursday, 15 January 2009 12:27

Your website is your business headquarters online, and risking it to amateur website designers can dash your hopes for a cash mill. But if you have the website design basics stored in your brain, you can try out your skill and hone it. A simple guide to designing a profitable website is your best tool to get your website off the ground.

How to Design a Profitable Website

A clean website, read uncluttered, is easy on the eyes. It has a professional look about it that attracts readers who are on the lookout for reliable online stores. Since there is no face-to-face interaction between buyer and seller, the looks of the website must have the face value edge plus the navigation tools to make online shopping easier for buyers who are always ready to get away at the slightest hint of website inefficiency.

Before setting out enthusiastically to design your website, know what you want, your target audience, and grab an idea from competition, especially those with websites that bowled you over. Having a general idea of your goal, get ready to embark on a website design exploration.

The Rules in Designing a Profitable Website

• Make it simple. At this point, do not be too ambitious. Stick to a simple yet effective layout.
• Avoid lengthy content. Readers are easily bored with long text. The agenda here is to keep them glued to your page without drowning them in words and more words that say little.
• Do not use small fonts. It is irritating for some readers to hunt for their magnifying glass just to read the words “click here.”
• Keep images to a minimum. The more images you put on your page, the more it will load slowly. A time waster it is and a waste of bandwidth too.
• Navigation should be clearly directed. Not all users can read minds, hence, make your navigation directions very clear and simple.
• Do not use scripting language for images or visual effects. Scripting language is effective for handling data and that is that.
• Lead your visitor to the Buy button. Be ready with the relevant information about your product/services and make sure that button works fast.
• Do not be stingy. Offer free newsletters, discounts, and what else to get your potential customers’ names with their permission.
• Make your website popular with all browsers. Limiting your website to Internet Explorer is the granddaddy of website design mistakes.

If you don’t want to bother with all the technical details, you are better off with website design template. You can get this from reputable website design companies like GyanArt All you do is choose the design and follow the instructions carefully.

Designing a website is not for the fainthearted nor is it only for the geeks on the block. You can design a profitable website following a simple guide and if you know the basics of XHTML or CSS. If you do not have any idea what an XHTML is, leave it to the masters to do the work.

GyanArt