Music on your site
When developing a web site, a common consideration is whether or not to add music to your site. With Flash becoming so popular, it is easier than ever to add a component to your home page that plays a song for visitors. After years of developing professional web sites for our clients, we strongly recommend against it. Here are some reasons why playing music on your site is not a good idea:
- Personal taste varies
Everyone has different tastes in music. What one person likes, another person may find annoying. Even if it is music you like, it may not be what you want to hear it while you are visiting a web site. The biggest mistake you can make is to annoy someone right from the start and lose them before they even have a chance to review your site or purchase your products.
- It might be offensive
Unless you know exactly who all of your visitors will be and their specific backgrounds, you take a chance on offending some people. There are so many different religious groups, political groups, genders, ethnic groups, income groups, etc - and almost every song will at some point or another offend one of these groups. You don't want your professional business to be put in the position of offending someone.
- Sound files increase page download times
Sound loops, especially the long ones, will decrease the performance of your site and increase download times. The longer you make visitors wait, the more likely they are to leave, and not come back.
- Not all browsers support playing sound files
With music on your site, you run the risk that visitors using older browsers may run into problems playing multi-media files from your site. If it is something that is built-in to the home page, it could have problems displaying the entire page or crashing the visitor's browser. It is just not worth the risk.
- It is unprofessional
Some people think it is very unprofessional to play music while visiting a site. This is not always the case, but it is definitely something to consider.
- Your music might interfere with other music playing
Many people use their computers to play music while they are using them. If they visit a site that is playing music, it will play both songs at the same time. If this has ever happened to you - you understand how annoying it is and how quickly you try to hit the back button to leave the page.
- It cuts off as you navigate and restarts every time you visit home page
If you have music in a component on your home page, every time you leave the page, the music will stop. Every time you come back to the home page, the music will start again. The only thing worse than having music playing on a site, is having it stop and start over and over again.
- It uses your bandwidth
This was probably more a problem previously than it is now, but it is still something to keep in mind. There are still some hosting companies that charge extra if you go over your bandwidth allocations.
- Sound loops are repetitive
Unless you are playing an entire song, you normally would use a sound loop on your site. Since they tend to be shorter, they are usually repeated. This will discourage visitors from staying on your home page for very long.
For a more professional, efficient, and effective site, we would recommend that you not use music on your site. Try a professionally created flash component instead!
|
