A potential client want to meet to discuss optimizing his website. I hadn’t been to the site before – so I decided to take a look before meeting with him. ( I like to be some what prepared.)

As usual, when I am surfing the web, I had my headphones on and working my way through my playlist. All of a sudden, there was the sound of crashing waves over top of Neil Sedaka. It took me a few seconds to figure out they were coming from the website and another couple of seconds to see that I couldn’t turn them off.

Audio and video are great was to promote your product or service. They can add a personal touch that can connect with your customer. However, there are some basic rules that you need to follow.

First – and by far the most important – they must NOT start automatically. You should invite people to listen to, or watch your presentation. A message that starts automatically when the visitor is not expecting is intrusive and rude.

Second – there MUST be a way of pausing the presentation. Everyone of us has been interrupted while surfing the Internet. From a phone call to the call of nature, there are times when you need to go and do something else. Don’t force the visitor to the site to listen to everything again — have a pause button.

Finally, the presentation MUST deal with your product or service. In this case the sound of crashing waves had nothing to do with the service. It was just background noise.

The key to any web business is repeat customers. How many times do you think someone will be returning to this site knowing they will be getting the same noise? What do you think is the first thing I will be talking about at our meeting?