5 Unique and Creative Ways to Use Audio on Your Site

If you’re interested in using web audio to its full effect on your visitors, without having to rely on a simple audio “welcome message” on your home page, consider these five creative and unique ways to use audio beyond the everyday “greeting message”.

1. Create an audio message and deliver it via e-mail - People are much more inclined to read short emails rather than long, drawn-out novels, no matter how much they like what you offer. 

The good news is, you can craft a short e-mail message that links your visitors to a more thorough and complete audio message that explains, shares information or gives them “customer appreciation” discounts in a way that they might ordinarily miss in an e-mail message.

For example, many e-mail program spam filters will highlight things like dollar signs or percentages, so your offer of $10 off your purchase of $50 or more, or a 70% off clearance sale might not make it to the customer’s inbox.  But if you write up a quick audio message advertising the sale, and provide a link to your customer in a special message for VIP members only - they’ll get to “hear” about it directly from you!

This not only helps you bypass spam filters and red flags, but it also helps you build a greater relationship between your company and your customers, by putting a real voice behind the message.

2. Create an audio postcard - People love the unexpected surprise of getting a card in the mail, so why not carry the tradition on to the Internet?  Craft a holiday, birthday or “thank you” greeting card using a self-made audio message. 

Add in some ambient background music and express your gratitude or holiday wishes to your clients.  They’ll remember your kind gesture and you may even see a boost in sales as a result!

3. Make an Audio Reminder - A well-timed “exit popup” with a brief audio message can help bring your visitor’s focus back to your website, even after they’ve left.

It should go without saying that you don’t want to abuse this process - rather use it to offer a special one-time only discount or a phone number where they can reach you with any questions.  Exit popups used professionally with audio can help you bring back customers who may not have purchased initially.

4. Sell High-Ticket Items - If you sell more expensive items, audio can go a long way in putting your visitors at ease before you reveal the price.  Used together with a professional web slide show demonstrating the benefits of your product, audio and high ticket items go well together since a calming voice helps build trust and credibility. 

If you don’t like how you sound over a microphone, consider outsourcing your voiceover through a service such as elance.com or rentacoder.com

5. Trigger Events with Audio - Wouldn’t it be great if you could open a new page, show a graphic or any other kind of event while you were speaking to your visitor over the Internet?  It would be the next best thing to actually being there with them!

The good news is, using the right kind of software program, you can automatically set up certain things to happen when you play your recording.  It’s ideal for interactive demonstrations, walkthroughs, introductions and more. 

You could hire an audio programmer to create all these things for you, but fortunately you can also buy a single software program that will do everything I’ve just described.  Take a serious look at the Total Web Audio package.  For a single one-time price, you can create an unlimited number of streaming internet audio pieces, audio and video post cards, triggered audio events and a whole lot more.

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