Blog
Don’t put music on your website!
Ok, I should clarify on this one a bit. I mean to say, “don’t have music automatically playing on your site when users arrive”. In this article, I’m going to go over the many reasons not to put music on your site. You would think, this day and age, you could avoid this topic all together. But, you’d be surprised.
Having music automatically play when someone enters your site, to some, is the finishing touch that turns their website into a masterpiece that stands out from the crowd. But this is one of those instances where you have to look at things from the eyes of your customers.
Take advice from the big dogs
When you visit Amazon or Apple’s website, do you hear music playing? What about eBay or Google? No? That’s because these guys did their research and it told them not to play music. I would trust them on this one.
Is your music that good?
Let’s, for a second, imagine you have great taste. And, who knows, maybe you do when it comes to music! There is just no way you are able to please every single person that visits your site with your band choices. No way! A bunch of them are just not going to be into your tunes, and that means lost clients/customers who never even got in through the front door. It’s hard enough getting people to a website, don’t make it harder!
Another scenario is what if they were already listening to music when they got to your site. Now they have to scramble to find the stop button so that your music doesn’t interfere with theirs. Most likely, they’ll opt for the easier way to not hear their music; hitting the back button.
What if they are in public or it’s late?
This is another one of those “lost customer” scenarios. Imagine the person visiting your site is in a public setting, like a library or a cafe. They go to your site, and are immediately forced to backtrack to avoid continued embarrassment. You can be sure they’ll remember your site as the one that made them red in the face.
Same goes for late at night. What if it startles them while they’re browsing in the wee hours of the evening. Same result happens; you lose a visitor, most likely, permanently.
It doesn’t make your website better
First off, have some confidence in your baby! You worked hard to get it where it is. Don’t immediately assume its not good enough without music. If that is your thought process, you need to reevaluate the overall site. Even sites that sell music shouldn’t have it playing automatically. That’s what play buttons are for.
But it’s a music site
Doesn’t matter. As I said before, adding play buttons in there will give the customer the option to play music, not force it down their throat. This should go double for people trying to sell music. Based on all the items I told you about up top, do you want people to associate your music with the reason they left your site?