You're building your website and naturally you want to express yourself. What better way to do that than sharing your taste in music with the rest of the world. It may seem like a good idea at the time but in the long run this is a bad idea.

Getting people to come to your website is hard. By blaring music in the background when the page loads you're likely to startle a good portion of your audience right into clicking the back button.

The other night one of the reps here at WebStarts was working late at night while his wife slept. In trying to help the client he clicked on the link to their website only to have music from their webpage blast out of the speakers. This woke up his wife and immediately left a bad taste in his mouth. Not to mention he closed the site as quickly as possible. If this was a potential lead they may never find the website again.

Even if you think your music adds some character or makes your website stand out there's a good chance people don't share your taste in music. Everyone has an opinion on music. You don't want to turn-off or offend someone because they don't share your musical taste. A while back I came across a website for a baseball team I was considering have my son join. When I went to their webpage it began playing rap music. Immediately I began to wondering about the character of the organization and whether my son would be a good fit.

If startling people and rubbing them the wrong way aren't reasons enough not to play music in the background of your website consider the fact it will also make your website load more slowly. Audio files are large and take more time to load. The longer it takes for your page to load the more visitors you'll lose to the dreaded back button. Why take the chance? If you really want to share music on your website you should allow the user to start and stop it with a player

WebStarts does provide the tools you need to add music to your website. If you haven't already done so you can create a free website with WebStarts by clicking here.