I was in talks with a potential client today about plans for his website. Something that he felt was very important was the use of multimedia instead of just static content. There are some real benefits of using multimedia content and I would say that as long as your multimedia enhances your basic XHTML content then this is an area that could be invested in.
The www.bbc.co.uk is one of the most popular websites on the planet and they are using multimedia in their content more and more. You can listen to sound bites and watch videos – but they are following some every basic rules
- The users gets to choose, you can choose to read the transcripts or listen to the sound bite.
- Content does not start playing automatically, the user is kindly asked to press the play button if they would like to proceed
- There are clear labels on the content to indicate if there is sound, so that we know what to expect
- Multimedia is used for content only – there are no flashy distracting images used on the website that are not content.
- All multimedia is designed around the content
Content is Key
The most important thing to remember when designing and planning your website is content. Content is key, it is the reason that Google exists, the reason people will be coming to look at your website and should be the reason for the website’s existence in the first place. All design, layouts and code should be created to enhance your content and sell your business.
- Some examples where we have used multimedia http://www.arkenis.com/ – uses a small flash animation on the home page only. The animation is just for decoration and impact, there is no need to repeat on all pages since it would be distracting.
- http://www.melodicdj.co.uk/Video.html – this website is for a DJ and Mathew really wanted to show off some of his light shows. We explained that having the videos on all pages would slow down the website and possibly deter people from reading any of the text. Instead we chose small chunks of video and displayed them on a separate page and allowed the client to choose if they wanted to see this or not. As you can see the page is slow to load and including them on all pages would make for poor usability.
If you have a very heavy text based website or perhaps you have a service that is really visual then I believe adding multimedia content would be a very good way of helping to convert your visitors. But using video’s and flash for design without considering their effects on content can be very distracting, affect the download speeds and might put some people off.
Ultimately if you want to use multimedia on your website, consider the pros and cons. Invariably it will cost more since it will need to be produced and optimised for the web and ask yourself if the extra costs have any clear benefits?
