Enhance Your Website with Audio - Here's Why

Would most viewers watch tv with the sound off? No…audio enhances the presentation. And since most computers have speakers, most websites should use audio to enhance their presentation, too.

With the current economic slump, business owners are looking at ways to improve on what they already have, hopefully quickly and preferably inexpensively.  Some are taking collateral materials from their business, articles they’ve written and even their own website text and turning it into audio, either for sale or to exchange for contact information of prospects.

There is nothing like the sound of a human voice to help form a more personal bond between the prospect and the business, and audio enhances the “stickiness” of a website, helping people want to stay longer and visit more pages.  Most people are more willing to listen to a few minutes of well-produced audio than they are to read long passages of text, and with the audio there, visitors simply click to learn more…the important information is still on the site.

Many people who visit websites have visual disabilities, so having audio is a great advantage for them and they seek out sites with an audio component.  It allows almost universal accessibility, since those with diminished vision, dyslexia or an inability to read the English language can still have access to the most important information on the site.

Using audio to enhance a website is easy, especially for business owners who already have a lot of written materials about their business.  Re-purposing existing tools speeds up the process of adding audio and gives those doing commerce on their sites an additional way to get buyers into their sales funnel.  Here are just a few ways audio can be useful on a website:

1. Take an article explaining one area of business expertise, make an audio version and offer it as a free gift in exchange for a prospect’s email address. 
2. Take 5 TO 10 articles on a related topic, make each into an audio presentation and offer it all as an e-course, either in exchange for a physical address, as a bonus for purchasing a related item, or as an item to purchase.
3. Take a tape of a seminar, polish it up, add a produced intro and outro for a more professional feel, and offer it for sale.  Multiply this by the number of different seminar topics and this can be an impressive revenue stream all by itself.
4. Take a long article or a short book and turn it into an audio book.  Audio books are invaluable in turning a prospect into not just a customer, but someone who’ll tell all his friends about his new-found expert.  After all, the business owner must be an expert…he has his own audio book!
5. Tip of the month or week or day audio is very popular, especially if it’s accompanied by an RSS feed.  Customers find the audio, find value in the tip, and hit the feed button.  Each time the audio is updated, they are alerted, reminding them to re-visit the site for more great information.
6. Especially in very large websites, navigation can get very frustrating.  There’s nothing like a friendly voice to help a visitor feel welcome, and when that human voice helps them find what they’re looking for on the site, they’re much more likely to become not just a repeat visitor but also a customer.
7. Information relevant to the business, but not a sales pitch, can be added to each page.  The best use of that moment with a visitor is to showcase expertise, not to try to close the deal.  Visitors came for information, not a hard sell.  The more information they get as they interact with the site, the longer they’ll stay and the more likely they are to buy.

There are as many different uses for audio on the internet as there are creative people to dream them up, but there are a few guidelines that should be followed:
Not everyone is in a private place when surfing the internet, so audio should always be “on demand.”  The person viewing the site should have to click a button on the webpage to start the audio.  A prominent audio link and an invitation to visitors to “click to hear more” shows visitors that their privacy is respected.  Audio that starts to play as soon as a page loads, or 15 to 30 seconds afterwards, is an almost universal turn-off.

If the audio can be downloaded and saved, be sure it includes contact information.  The job of transportable audio is to not only enlighten the person who saved it, but also to enlighten and recruit those people the finder shares that audio with.  If a piece of audio can become separated from the web page where it lives, contact information is vital.

It’s important that the audio sound as professional as the website looks.  If the site is beautiful but the audio sound like someone talking through a kazoo, that’s a big disconnect in peoples’ minds.   Professional audio enhances the site far beyond the cost of production, and amateurish audio will turn prospects off.

Computers have speakers, just like televisions do.  Websites that don’t make use of those speakers are missing a major entertainment and educational component.  As bandwidth widens for home and business users, websites that don’t make use of those speakers are missing a major entertainment and educational opportunity.  The era of the silent website is coming to a close, just like silent movies faded into oblivion once “talkies” were developed.  Business owners can enhance sites now and get a jump on their competition, or can play catch-up in a year or two.

It pays to be ahead of the curve, especially during this current economy.  “Better late than never” may not be an option…the stand-outs will win and the losers may lose it all. 

If I can answer any questions for you, please don’t hesitate to contact me.