<p>If you have a business and you don’t have a website you won’t be taken seriously by the people who count most, your customers. This statement was true five to ten years ago. Now, you soon won’t be taken seriously if your site doesn’t provide audio on top of the visual already there.</p>
<p>Now and in the future the new way of thinking about business and the internet is to maximize your website so that it generates revenue for you. And there is no doubt that the most inexpensive and effective way to make your website work best is by adding streaming audio with professional voice talent telling your site visitors exactly what it is that you want to tell them and exactly what they want to hear.</p>
<p>Twelve to fifteen years ago when the internet was just taking off, it had it’s limitations. Lack of speed and immediacy was the biggest problem. With dial up connections, no broadband, and a lack of bandwidth presenting video or audio on your website meant that you would ask your customers for patience and to wait while your site opened up. Of course you could only ask your site visitors for patience if you had the funds to have paid a web developer to include audio or video on your site to begin with. It wasn’t cheap. It tended to add several thousand dollars to your website development.</p>
<p>Now, video streaming will still cost you an additional few thousand dollars to ad it to your website. But audio can be added for under $200, in most cases. And for that price what business owner worth his megabites isn’t going to add audio to there website.</p>
<p>Ask yourself this, do you watch TV with the sound up, or the sound muted? If your answer is the later I would urge you to try turning up the volume. It expands the experience tremendously. Having established that sound is better than no sound for a visual medium like television. Why wouldn’t sound be better for your website?</p>
<p>Here are some rules to follow when you make this leap into modern marketing.</p>
<p>Don’t send a boy to do a man’s job, a girl to do a woman’s job, or an amateur to do a professionals job. Like most professions or trades, announcers or voice talents as they prefer, are better and more effective than what you can do yourself (unless you happen to be a professional announcer). They are also better than the new guy on your staff with the good set of pipes and the gift for gab. And a professional voice talent can convey the exact emotion and sense of import you would want on your web site.</p>
<p>Also, know what you want to say. Merely having what is already appearing on the website read aloud by a voice talent is better than nothing, but far less than it could be. Use your web audio for the purpose of saying more than what you could print/display.</p>
<p>Change it up. Loading and unloading audio is a lot easier than changing your whole website. Create files of audios that are seasonal, or refer to specific events or conditions. For example if you are a mortgage agent you need one audio file for when interest rates are rising, one for when interest rates are falling, and one for when they are stagnant.</p>
<p>Allow for the fact that the website viewer may not want to hear your audio. For the next year or two web audio will continue to be a rare thing on internet websites. As such you can anticipate visitors not expecting to hear audio “pop up” when they open your site. Until it becomes the norm, we’ll all have to deal with that likely reaction. Your visitor could be on the job in the office, they could be listening to the radio or mp3s. You combat a negative reaction to the audio easily by having written into the script and read by the announcer after their initial friendly greeting…”If you’d like to not hear this audio narrative just hit the mute button for your computer, click the mute button on this web site, or visit our sites other pages that don’t contain audio”. Installing and prominently displaying a mute button on your page is easy and inexpensive. Problem solved. Of course, you could also make the audio optional with a link button on the web page identified as “Web Audio” or “Audio Narrative”.</p>
<p>Studies have shown that people respond to what they're being told 70% of the time; while responding to what they have read 30% of the time. You can talk to your customers and tell them what they want to hear and what you want them to hear. But to do so best, you need your website to talk to your customers. Web audio talks to your customers.</p>
<p>Thanks for visiting. Comments are welcome.</p>
2009-07-28T00:45:43Z
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web-audio-its-whats-new-on-the-internet
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2009-08-05T15:21:45Z
2009-08-05T22:21:58Z
In running or starting a business everyone needs a website, but its only recently that SOUND is more frequently being added to sites. It makes sense, and it is very inexpensive to do.
Web Audio: It's What's New on the Internet
1
2009-08-07T15:03:50Z