I recently met with a web designer friend of mine, when the subject veered off on to the topic of uninvited audio on a web site. Sometimes businesses use this trick on their web sites, without a full understanding of the impact it may have on their viewer.
My friend was telling me that she sometimes has multiple tabs on multiple windows open, when she’ll hear a sound. Now she’s forced to dig through each tab to turn the noise off.
I have the same issue. I’m always working with several tabs in several windows, sometimes even in different browsers. If I hear a Youtube video kick in, this can be a real issue. A lot of times, it interrupts the music I had playing, which is a further disruption.
My favorite story on uninvited audio came when I helped a graphic design friend of mine with some copy. I was working with him in his basement, going through the pages on his web site. I was trying to convince him the music he had in the background on his site did not help matters along.
As I shuffled through the pages, I came back to the home page, which restarted the music. By clicking on his home page, I inadvertently woke his newborn baby up in the next room.
I certainly didn’t mean to wake the baby up, but you couldn’t have written a better commercial for why intrusive audio is a bad thing. If you’re building your own site, give your viewers the option to press play.
If you make things automatic, you’ll send a good percentage of potential customers away annoyed.
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