Designers mainly focus on the visuals and what people will see when they visit the website. But there is more to website design than visuals; using audio will help improve your website and appeal to more people.

Audio has been used in websites for many years, and it has had its ups and downs, as any web design agency will tell you. Specific uses of sound in websites have stuck around, while other services have not been as successful. If you don’t know if you should use audio on your website or how you should use it, then we want to help.



Why You Should Use Audio In Website Design
There are many benefits to using audio in your website’s design, and we want to make sure that you know what they are. Knowing these will help you decide if the addition of audio will help enhance your website for your target users.

There are different ways of adding audio to your technology website, and while not all of them need to be added, just one or a few that are suitable can have your users coming back to your website, and web design firms know this. Some websites even make it their selling point, and their audio choices for their website’s design make them unique.

Improve The Website’s Accessibility
When you think about improving a website’s accessibility; people don’t usually consider audio. Sound can improve your website’s accessibility and help new users have a better user experience. You can use audio to read text on the website; this will help visually impaired users find out what the website’s content is.

Text-based CAPTCHA has used audio alternatives for their puzzles for years now, and this helps visually impaired users complete the puzzles as quickly as other users can. This is one example of how audio can enhance a website’s accessibility and improve the user experience of people using the website.

Enhance The User Interface
Having micro animations will help you enhance the visuals that your website has, and it will help the user see that their interactions with the visuals are quick and responsive. Sound can be used similarly and can be added to enhance the user interface. For example, they add a sound when someone clicks on a button. This will make it clear to the user that they have clicked on the button, making the website seem more responsive.

Examples Of Audio In Web Design Done Well

Netflix – Dark Series Guide
People do not typically like audio that plays when they visit a website. This can be unpleasant, and it can be surprising and not something that the user wants. This can cause users to leave the website because they had a bad experience and don’t want to go through it again.

Netflix has shown others how audio can be used right with the series ‘Dark’ guide. They use ambient sounds that help the listener get into the right mood to watch the series. This enhances the listener’s experience of the show and the Netflix website.

Audio needs to be used fittingly; it should not play for longer than it needs to; this can get annoying. Netflix stops the audio from playing when the user leaves the tab. This helps keep the experience isolated to the Netflix website.

SoundCloud – Music Control Bar
The SoundCloud music control bar plays the song that the user has selected even if the user decides to change pages on the website. The user can do what they want to on the website, but it will continue to play whatever is playing.

This enhances the user’s experience and gives them more flexibility when using the SoundCloud website. Some websites that play audio will stop the audio when the user navigates to a different page, which can be restricting and ruin the user experience.

Applications like Spotify might already do this, but this feature doesn’t appear as often on websites. This is a feature that more websites that have audio control bars and audio players will start to use to give their users the best user experience.

Narrating Website Content
If you haven’t noticed, websites have started to add audio versions of their content. The text will be read to the user instead of having to read it themselves, giving people another way to enjoy a website’s content. This extra option will help give people a choice of how they want to know about what is written, and this flexibility helps improve the user experience.

With this option, people can focus on other things while listening to what they want to visit on a website. It doesn’t need to be specific websites anymore or just audiobooks. Text-to-speech software is getting better, and anyone can use it to improve their website’s user experience.

Conclusion
Audio can be used in different ways to enhance a website's experience and give people the best user experience. Web design firms know how sound can improve a website’s accessibility, and they try to add it to their client’s websites wherever it is suitable.

When using sound on your website, you need to ensure that it is used well. It can easily be misused, which will cause people to become annoyed. If you don’t know how audio should be used on your website, ask a web agency to help you. You should test your choices before adding them to your website; this will help you determine what your target audience thinks about the new audio edition.