Web Usability - Background Music

Question

I personally loathe background music on a website. My client has opposite feelings on the subject. I added music because the customer is always right, though I'd like to revisit the subject with them.

Almost everyone would agree that it is annoying and wastes precious bandwidth but are there any usability studies or a recommendation for someone esteemed in the profession that can provide a valid argument against background music?

Answer 1

Metrics. You'll never be able to convince a business person with an emotional answer.

If you investigate the situation empirically you'll be able to give them something irrefutable.

I would would try an experiment: (get google analytics)

• have one site with the music as-is, measure the bounce rate,etc
• have an identical site without music, measure the bounce rate,etc

Have the server randomly serve up the different pages for a couple weeks (until you get a significant data) and see what happens.

Maybe we're wrong (I hate music too). I hope your customer is wrong, but who knows.

You could also add a survey link and try to get people to answer that as well (but without an incentive that might not work)

Stats can be your friend here :)

Answer 2

Pardon me, but i have a different opinion about loading music in the website. With all due respect I have for the answer posters of this thread.

I see visits to e-commerce websites like going to a shopping complex. Where you have a cart, varieties of products, checkout counters and background music to make your stay as comfortable and interesting as possible.

There's a whole psychological reason as to what certain slow paced music can do to certain parts of the brain. Some studies even suggested that certain music play a role in motivating customers to purchase more items. Check this site

This can definitely be a plus point in a website. Of course it depends on what kind of website it is. However, a slow and non-vocal music shouldn't necessarily disrupt one's attention; rather it might have the opposite effect.

My justification is that when a potential customer visits a site, he is only using one of his senses while browsing through the pages. His eyes! I'm saying why not allow him (if he wants) to use his sense of hearing that would encourage him (not only through the means of displaying fancy texts, design and animations that looks nice to the eyes) but also to capture his attention through music (allowing him to be more in touch with the site).

Its obviously not possible to trigger his sense of smell and taste. But why limit it to only the eyes. Why not use the ears too!

Whether you choose to put music into your site or not, MichaelStum's post about having an option to turn off the music is highly essential.

Of course in the end its all about the amount of traffic that comes to your website. For this matter, @Cbrulak's idea of using Google Analytics would be a realistic approach for different individuals.

Answer 3

Unfortunately, as a service provider of sorts, all we can do is cringe and give the customer what they want - after documenting your disapproval both commented in the code and in writing to the client, of course.

Answer 4

Music also interferes with screen reader users. I'm a blind computer user and nothing annoys me more then having music start playing and drowned out my speech program that's trying to read the site. Nothing will make me close a website quicker then unwanted audio.

Answer 5

It took a bit but I found a site that talks about usability on web sites.

They have a video on the right hand side of this page:

http://www.ciaromano.com/evaluating/testing.php

It shows why audio ads are not a good idea on websites.

Hope this helps.

G-Man

Answer 6

This is a tough one -- and what's amazing is that at the moment, I have a client who's demanding the exact same thing.

Personally I don't know of any usability studies addressing this topic specifically, but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence out there from users complaining about the intrusiveness or outright corniness of unrequested background music. * That said, clients still ask for it. Best you can do is try to explain the situation to them, try to gather a few good examples of people complaining about it from the Web at large, build a case, and hope the client goes for it.

In my case, she completely agrees that it's potentially annoying, understands it cuts against the grain of user expectations and politeness, but wants it anyway. So I'm building it. Whaddyagonnado.

* Indeed, you could probably use this thread as evidence! Good luck.