« Getting Google To Re-Index Your New Website | Home | Why Your Website Should Use Blog Software: INSTANT Indexing »
George Carlin’s 7 Dirty Words - Keep The Sound Down!
By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | January 11, 2008
A looooong time ago way before the Internet had gone multimedia, I was up late browsing websites, and one was taking a long time to load. The speakers on my computer were up LOUD, and all of a sudden an audio of George Carlin rapid-firing his “seven dirty words” blared through my computer speakers.
It scared the crap out of me. (And then I started laughing after the initial shock)
Good thing I wasn’t in some office cubicle, or I would have had some ’splainin to do.
Especially if you’re selling something to the business crowd, you should really weigh the pros and cons of adding auto-loading audio to your web page.
You may think it’s a no-brainer way to give that personal touch to your visitors, but here’s the pitfalls:
- If they’re landed on your website while goofing off at work an their speakers are on, they closed their browser in a nano-second and you lost a visitor. (And now they resent you for getting them in trouble)
- If the audio is playing at the same time they’re trying to absorb a text-laden web page, they’re getting stimuli from 2 sources and can’t really pay attention to either of them (that’s bad).
- For whatever reason, someone may not like the sound of your voice and be “turned off” by it. It may not sound professional to them (or it may sound TOO professional and phony), or someone may think you have a weird accent and not be able to relate to you. (I was in Mississippi a few years ago, and people literally couldn’t understand what I was saying, they’d just stare at me. It was frustrating and funny at the same time.)
If you DO have auto-playing audio, have a really obvious “stop” button on it so visitors can turn it off. I mean more than just an icon that some people may not find or understand, I mean make it obvious.
Better yet, don’t auto-play it, just have a prominent link, “For a personal message from ****** Click Here“.
There are no hard and fast rules for this, just like there are no hard and fast rules for putting your photo on a sales letter, or what TYPE of photo to put on a sales letter (professional looking? friendly? picking your nose? inquiring minds want to know!)
The solution: Test, test, test.
Topics: Funny, Marketing | Trackback URL