Sounds Effects For A Richer Multimedia Experience On Your Website

A total multimedia experience is now available online. Gone are the days when websites are composed of a text blocks and animated graphics. Now, websites can let its audience experience their information, service or product using a rich multimedia experience using text, images, audio and video.

One way to improve user experience in your website is by adding sound.
Sound effects can be very effective in providing an easy way to use or navigate your website. For example, when visitors hover their mouse pointers over a specific link and here a sound of a bell, they will somehow know that that they will be taken to another page of your site when they click on it. Or a short sound clip may play while visitors are waiting for an image or movie to load.

There are so many ways in which audio can enhance your website. But how do you add such sound effects?

Plan the Sound Effects to be Used

Before putting any music on your website, ask yourself the following questions: “Which type of music would I want on my website?", “On which pages should I put sound effects?”, “How would I implement and add the sound effects to make them effective for my visitors?”

Adding sound effects to your website may be easy as pie, but you have to make sure they would be effective in enriching your visitors’ experience. Remember to not be intrusive of your visitors. As much as possible, try to avoid loud sound effects that automatically plays when your homepage loads on a browser. Most visitors would not like to be startled by loud intro music. You have to consider that there are users who have their headsets on and there are even others who forget to mute or turn down their speaker volume. However, if you must have intro music, you might want to choose the music carefully.

Collecting Sound Clips

Based on your plan, you need to build a library of sound effects that you will use on your website. Unless your website project is big and well-funded, hiring a professional is not exactly the way to go. Sure, if you have a big budget and your project or campaign is monumental, then by all means get a composer or a sound engineer. But the easiest, most affordable route is to scour the web for royalty-free music and sound clips. There are so many websites that offer music or sound clips which are free for download and use as long as you would follow the terms and conditions stated by either the website service or the creator of the clip. A note of caution, make sure you do not use any trademarked or licensed sound effects. That would be copyright infringement; which is punishable by the law.

Implementing Sound on Your Website

Now that you have planned how your collection of sound effects will be used on your website, there are different ways in which you can implement them.
First, there is always Adobe Flash. However, you need to produce a Flash movie or menu before you can add sound. This method is only advisable if you know your way around Flash or if you will get a multimedia professional to do it for you. However, if you have some knowledge of HTML and JavaScript, then you can easily add sound effects to your website. You can do a Google search for free JavaScript collections or archives and on those sites, you will be able to find instructions and pieces of codes that will help you implement sound effects.

If you might want a readily available code, then you might like to try a simple method of adding sound to your website.

Adding sound to a website must be carefully planned and implemented. When not done correctly, your visitors may not be able to enjoy your content. But when done just right, rest assured that every visitor will be able to have a full experience of what your website is all about.

About the Author:
### Charlie Martin is the Vice President of Marketing and Operations for Sound Images, a Cincinnati, Ohio-based company offering total audio production – from multi-lingual voice overs and sound design; to original music, postscores and jingles. To learn more of the codes that you can embed on your website, visit http://thepopbusiness.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/sounds-effects-for-a-richer-multimedia-experience-on-your-website/ ### The author is a copywriter affiliated with Sound Images, a professional recording studio and audio production company.