Why you shouldn’t use music on your website

Let’s view the most prominent reasons why the usage of music on a site is totally undesirable.
Almost everyday you run into websites which automatically play background music or video clips. Surely, music or audio can be quite an effective and useful tool but only when used wisely on the website (“play” buttons, for example), but in reality, most people just put background audio sounds that cannot be steered by visitors. Obviously, that’s the worst scenario when you have no sensible reason for playing background music.
Ok, let me list the most prominent reasons why you shouldn’t use music on your website:

1. There are many many people who browse the Internet at work. Picture a situation. You’ve got a potential buyer who is ready to click a link to your site whilst being in the office. Now the site loads and unexpectedly the audio starts to auto-play attracting attention of all the other working staff. What do you think is going to happen next? Of course, your potential buyer will quickly close down the page and move to another website. That’s the easiest way to stop music blaring loudly.

2. Well, you may have a possibility to play music on the site, but should you? That’s the question. For example, you’ve got a template that gives you an option to switch on background music on a site. You’ve gone through the list of tunes and nothing really impressed you, but you still decide to put music on. That’s totally wrong! If you’ve got an option to use music, you don’t have to. Simple as that. If you were a non-smoker and your new posh car were equipped with a nice ashtray and a lighter, would it mean you had to start smoking? Of course, it’s just an example, but at least you can see what I mean.

3. What about people with no speakers? If you believe that your music is really so important on the site, how can you know if all the users had a chance to listen to it? This is where it is really important to have a button “play” instead of auto-play.

4. Playing audio files slows down the downloading time of the site. The more stuff you put on a website, the longer it takes for your potential customers to open a site. You can’t afford to lose your clients for such reason. Therefore, first thing first, think of your website functionality and its effectiveness.

5. But the most important thing is to remember about the whole purpose of having a website – to make money. All the items of the website should help your visitors to click the button “order” or “buy”.

Related posts:

• How do we users think?
• What has your website got to say about your business?
• How to NOT create an annoying website design
• Important rules in the web design
• Common mistakes when building a website