Over at the SEOmoz blog, I came across an article that does a good job explaining why NOT to use background music on most websites.
The main point of the article is that when the end-user does not expect sound on a website, don’t give it to them. The exceptions would be band websites, movie websites, and other heavily multimedia rich websites.
To kick things off here I am going to talk about a topic that has been circulating around the web lately, the topic of bad design and how it effects your visitors. Visitors to your site make a split second decision about your products and services based on the look of your site. They make snap judgements about how professional your company is and if they can trust you. These aspects are the core of attracting people to your site. Content and how it’s organized also plays a large role in the effectiveness of a site, which is another topic for a different day.
Anyone can throw up text and some pictures and call it a website these days. Advances in technology have made it very easy for people to create their own sites, but that doesn’t neccessarily guarantee success, as there is more to it than that. Many aspects such as choice of colors, layout, visual heirarchy and content relevance are key to attracting visitors. People will continue to revisit sites they find visually appealing. Site navigation and how it is presented is also extremely important as it provides a means for people to explore your site. We strive to create clean, usable and accessable websites that reflect a company’s image.