December 13, 2006

Are Your Web Site Bells and Whistles Annoying People Away?

I was recently on the web site of WCBS News Radio 88 and listening to some local news via the Internet. WCBS' web site, like other radio stations has quickly evolved from a crappy looking web site into one rich with information and quite useful.

There's frequently updated news stories, pod costs and more. They now have video advertisements in the window that streams the audio feed - it appears that this slows things down a bit and makes the audio not so clear.

However as I was listening - a video cut-out of someone popped up on the lower right of the screen inviting me to subscribe to NJ Transit train information on my PDA. The "little person" advertisement (from Rovion)was interesting and caught my attention - but more than that - I was overwhelmed with how much information was being thrown at me.

What about your web site?

Let people come in and see a clean site, then GENTLY show off other things like video, talking characters and other things. The character itself would not have been so bad (I'm a fan of Oddcasts's Avatars for example) but you have to make sure that you don't jam your site with distracting advertisements, pop-ups, bells, whistles and information.

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