The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

• Is autoloading a music file on page load a good idea?
• Is there a difference between autoloading music versus other kinds of sounds?
• Do people respond favorably to "...those terrifying floating and talking heads that are supposed to pass for inventive advertising"?
• ditto for the video ads that start talking to you on page load ("Nothing makes me flee a page faster.").
• What are best practices for presenting music clips today if you're not iTunes?
• If you've got a show to promote and it uses some swell music, is it a better to use a highly visible link that says, "Hear our swell music"? Or does the music just start on page load (autoload) and then there's a highly visible link to turn it off?

And we haven't begun to get into gender, age and ethnicity factors, all of which contribute mightily to how people respond to sound events.
My response is going to be intentionally general. Susan suggested I write a column about the best use of sound events and I think that's a good idea. In the meantime, I'll offer this:

Believe it or not, we're still discussing elements started in Behaviors and Engagement Mechanics, Part 1 because autoloading sound events, etc., has to do with how people respond (behave) to such events. Whether or not to autoload sound events and how to encourage site visitors to favorably respond to them involves engagement mechanics.

The first part of using sound events well is to appreciate what visitors are coming to your site to do, ie, what is their expectation. A reader mentioned iTunes. Well, anyone going to iTunes should know ahead of time that music is going to be there and that listening to music is part of why they're going to iTunes, hence it's part of their expectation and desired experience. What about a site that offers several things, some of which are sound events such as music?

The 'net is still a visual medium and much like driving a car, you need to keep your eyes on where you're going in order to get what you want. This is what the majority of visitors do so make use of it. For example, use RIA (Rich Internet Applications) on a page with a bunch of CD covers on it. Hover (as opposed to just cursoring) over any CD cover and the music from the CD starts playing. Users might not expect this at first so the experience has to be a pleasurable one. That could be done by having the volume over time (less than a minute) increase and decrease according to the following curve. You'd want visitors to hover so that the music doesn't just cue up due to simple navigation. This also gets them to participate in the experience. Even if leaving the mouse over a specific CD wasn't their intention, they soon realize that behavior A triggers activity B, and you have them engaging with the page, staying on the site, and a trackable hence measureable event.

More on the use of sound on the web to follow, as well as information on behaviors and engagement mechanics.