Sound and Websites

[spazmaster]

Heya fella's and gals,

anyways, the issue i wanted to discuss with you guys is the domain of Sound and Websites.

Different Expectations
When i turn on my TV, i'm expecting to hear sound. When i visit a website i do not expect to hear sound, and when i look at my past behaviour, i see that i nearly always turn off the on-load sound on any website the second i can. I'm scanning for the mute sound! My engagements with TV or with a website, are accompanied with totally different expectations.

Selling a product
We just launched a new website for a client (www.radioelizabeth.com) who is a voice artist. The client wants sound on-load, which i can understand. I actually agree with her, because people visiting her site will be mainly people interested in a voice artist and are coming there to get an impression of who she is, what she stands for, and Elizabeth serves them her "sound" instantaneously. Because of how the website unfolds her sound adds to the experience by supporting the animations that the site opens with.

Permission
My colleague however disagrees. He argues that we should go for "best practice" and advise along that path. People visiting a website should always be offered the decision of triggering the sound instead of being forced to hear sound. The user has a better experience, being acknowledged that permission should be given for presenting sound in a website.

Looking at my own behaviour i know i want to control the fact if i'm gonna hear sound or not, and found it annoying when sound is on-load, but on the other hand i think we're looking at a taregt group who will shift expectations from a normal website, and be OK since its a wbesite of a VOICE artist.

Go between
CyanBlue had a good remark, offering the solution of using Shared Object to play the sound on-load the first time the user visits the site, but cancels the on-load the second time the user enters the site. This could avoid the annoyance usually created by repeat visits to a website accompanied by repeats of the same sound over and over again.
However this does defy the "permission based" expectation that user experience wise seems the best practice.

Best Practice
Is there a best practice in this? Regardless of what kind of website we're dealing with? What do you guys think? I was hoping to get a discussion going on so there would be a chance to offer eachother insightful principles/info.

looking forward to hear from you guys!

[petefs]

You can't please 100% of the people 100% of the time, can ya? :D

I suggest on site load asking the user's preference for sound and using the SO to store <that> information. This offers a nice middle ground between what your client wants and what your integrity demands. Your client is insured that her music is brought to the forefront since the visual cue of a preference question is forced upon the user on first load, while your audience only needs to say once whether or not they want to enjoy the sound-enriched experience ^_^

Hope you can sort things out, it's always a difficult call with enforced sound... : ( ( try and tell our musician that : D )

[cool.Marty]

Some users/visitors may not even have a sound card/speakers/ speakers switched on.

[tg]

nothing is more annoying than being blasted with sound when you come to a site.
however, when the site is for/about music/sound, then i think i would expect it. you might start the sound out very low (almost indestinquishable) then gradually raise the volume to the desired level. this way the user will hear it comming, and have time to find the 'off/mute' button. this choice can then be recorded into an so, so nexttime the user comes, if they've chosen 'mute' the music won't start.

what's your client think? i believe thats the most important voice involved here.

[petefs]

Ultimately your client's happiness IS number 1 -- you're doing the work for them in the end.

But keep in mind that people don't always really know what will make them happy, and one factor in that is if what she wants doesn't make the people viewing the site happy she'll end up unhappy. You need to decide together what will really make her viewing public happy, and make sure that you explain to her with tact that that's the most important thing :D

Good idea, tg, I like that one a lot and for some reason didn't think of it! If it starts indestinguishable a good idea might be to make the sound controls apparent so they don't have to hunt ^_^

[tg]

a good idea might be to make the sound controls apparent so they don't have to hunt ^_^
very apparent!

[petefs]

very apparent!

In fact, go back to my first idea!! :eek:


just kidding, I like tg's idea better than mine. very nice third side for a question that seems to only really have two sides : )

[pixelwit]

I'm on a crappy dial-up connection and think there should be some sort of preloader since deciphering her sentences as they trickle in 3 or 4 syllables at a time doesn't really give me that "polished professional" feeling. I doubt I'll be alone in this experience as her site doesn't seem to be geared towards "high-tech/high-bandwidth" clients.

I agree that the sound should start automatically by default (due to the nature of the site) and that the last used settings should be stored in a Shared Object and restored on the next visit.

Just an opinion.

-PiXELWiT
http://www.pixelwit.com