3 Reasons Not To Put Music On Your Website

Written by David Kelly on April 1st, 2008.      1 comments

Sites with music are neither quick nor convenient. A few years ago they may have been the rage, but today music or voice playing on a website is somewhat dated.
It won't work, and chances are you will annoy your customers and they will be relaxing with a competitor where things are more peaceful.
Why is noise such a bad idea? We could fill pages, but here are the top three reasons:

1. It will slow down your site. Waiting for your music file to load will add to the daily stress of a website user as opposed to relieve it.

2. It will embarrass and annoy your visitor. Often website users access a website from work. With a normal silent site, one may efficiently and quietly multi-task. But a blast of music (you never know where the volume is set) will alert the guy in the next room or professor in the midst of a lecture that the user is surfing. That's when the user vows never to visit your site again!

3. Chances are the visitor will hate your music. Do you really know what each of your visitors would like to hear at the moment of their visit to your site? Even the Itunes website does not play music.

Adding these kinds of extras to a website really sends the message that you are not thinking about the user's experience. There is no reason that your site can't be just as elegant without music. The form of your website should follow its function. If your function is to give users information about your business or an efficient way to transact business with you, it's hard to justify the kind of tinny, repetitive website music that makes the "off" or "close" button the most used icon on your website.

Thanks to www.spaboomblog.com for this great article
Topics: Web Design Tips
 

1 Comments

KP says ...
I was just in a meeting and was asked to put a sound on the site if a user rolled over a button, the first thing i said was it will slow the site down and then it would annoy the user.

Thank to your post as it backs up what i was thinking.

I can not see the reason to add sound either and if you need sound to tell your user that they have hit your navigation just maybe you need to rethink your site navigation?
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