Friday, October 5, 2007

Pump Down the Volume

Although our text is a recent update of the things that annoy us online, a topic I feel has grown in popularity recently and isn't receiving much attention in our readings is the use of sound on websites.

Sound, whether its spoken word, unrequested music or a pop up sound effects are one of the most irritating things I find on websites today, and cause me to almost immediately leave a page if I can't turn it off.

Has anyone else noticied this recent trend? And is anyone else as turned off by this as me?

3 comments:

Jen DiMauro said...

I find sound to be one of the most annoying and deterent parts of a site, especially if I can't find a way of turning it off within the first ten seconds of entering the site.
I have noticed it a lot and I think it is a way the designers feel that they are making their site more unique by using multimedia. I think that it is a bad idea and I think it makes people avoid certain sites.

Unknown said...

I can totally agree. I find sound to be one of the most obnoxious parts of a website. But, when you cannot turn it on or off that makes me even more aggrivated. What are other people's opinion of this?

Anonymous said...

I definitely agree...I don't mind audible pop-ups as long as they have a blatant "Off" button I can find easily, but they are often intrusive and annoying. EW.com has a few pop-ups that are sound enabled, but they pop-up with the sound turned off, which I thought was cool and at least a little nod to users.