A Sound Investment - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Home Office Computing, Feb, 2000 by Charles Pappas

Adding audio features to your site keeps you in tune with your customers

IN DESIGNING YOUR WEB SITE YOU followed all the rules, jettisoned slow-loading graphics, and provided visitors with handy search and even polling and chat features. The next step is to wow them with audio.

You can use sound to enhance your site in a variety of ways--to inform visitors about a product or service, entertain them as they navigate your site, or as vehicle for communicating with you in real time. Although adding an audio component has always been possible, tricky code and hefty downloads have made it tough for all but the most tech-savvy Webmasters to implement. Now, a new wave of tools makes it easy.

"A Web site without sound is like watching The X-Files with the volume off," says Alexis Vincent Aiosa, a Los Angeles-based, e-commerce graphic artist who displays his audio-enhanced work at www.loop.com/~avaiosa. "The interactivity of the Web is lost without sound," Aiosa adds.

Livening up your pages with audio is fun, but it's also good for business. A recent study by Arbitron New Media and Edison Media Research found that surfers who listen to Web audio are 43 percent more likely to make an online purchase than those who do not.

"Sound can be a wonderful feature," says Jim Sterne, president of Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Target Marketing, and author of World Wide Web Marketing (John Wiley & Sons). "If you're selling something that can be better understood if it's heard, then sound is the right addition." Sterne also recommends making your audio features tasteful, unobtrusive, and quick to download.

Get the Beat You won't find many mortgage lenders who admit to being beatniks, but Sam Berkebile is one--a Beatnik (www.beamik.com) user, that is. Last June, the manager of Hanover, Pa.-based All American Mortgage Co. enhanced his commercial lending site with Beatnik's free audio service.

Instead of the silence that greets most Web sites' visitors, Berkebile's customers enjoy light, jazzy tunes when clicking on the Mortgage Calculator or Residential Lending button. "It lets people know we're not a bunch of stiff suits," says Berkebile of the "sonified" site.

As coined by Beatnik, "sonification" is the process of making the sound and music on your Web pages interactive in real time. When a visitor moves the cursor over an area on your site, or clicks on an object (say, a button labeled Find Out More), that triggers the audio. Other Beatnik choices include accordion or violin music, a gunshot, a castanet rattling, and even a bird call.

To add Beatnik audio, copy the free HTML code from the Beatnik site, then paste it where appropriate in your pages. In order to hear your audio, visitors must download a plug-in when they arrive at your site. "Music softens our image," says Berkebile. "It makes us seem more like an interactive TV show" than a mortgage lender, he adds.

Phone Home If you want to connect with customers via the Web and the phone, consider WebCallback (www.webcallback.com), one of a new wave of telephony applications built for the Web. When a visitor clicks on the WebCallback link and enters his phone number, the program makes a call to your company. When you answer, WebCallback alerts you that a Web customer is calling, then connects you.

The service costs 16.9 cents per minute for domestic long-distance calls, plus a monthly $10 charge. And as with Beatnik, you cut and paste the WebCallback code into your Web site's HTML.

Seattle-based real estate broker David Sprague says adding the feature to his site (WestCoastAreaHomes. com) has been a "worthwhile experiment. Customers like knowing it's there, and I'd guess 10 percent of those who use it make a purchase. It adds something extra."

Leave a Message Something extra is what you get with PageTalk (www.pagetalk.com), which lets you record a 20-second message letting site visitors know, say, that a product is out of stock or certain items are on sale.

PageTalk works with the free, downloadable RealAudio player. To use it, just cut and paste the free HTML code from PageTalk's site to yours, then dial the provided 800 number and record your message. Visitors simply click on the button to hear the message. You can change the message as often as you like--every day, or every hour.