Enough with the Noise

Okay, folks here's my snit of the day - automatic video and audio play on web sites that you can't turn off! Somebody who thinks they're really smart came up with the notion that a video or audio will improve the CTR and attention span on marketing site. Well, to be fair, that's true. A video or audio is certainly much more entertaining than a plain text ad. It can also say "hey I'm successful enough to have a fancy video on my site". The problem comes from sites who take it one step too far and then one step even farther. The first bad step is to put up a video that is difficult to turn off or, at least turn down the volume. Imagine some poor sap, sitting in a dead end job, surfing the net looking for a way to escape the rat race by investing in an online income opportunity. She certainly doesn't want her boss to hear your pitch. And if you want her to finish looking at the rest of your site, you better make it easy for her to turn down the blab. And what about those site that don't even let you do that? How long before that same potential customer slams closed your web site because she can't find a way to shut up your loud mouth pitch? Please, folks, don't make this mistake - enough with the noise!