One of the most important tasks in online selling, and indeed

in all selling, is to convince the prospective buyer that you

are someone who can be trusted. A nice picture of yourself in

your “about” section is helpful, but even more convincing would

be a heartfelt audio message in which you explain yourself and

introduce your product or service.

If you are thinking that installing a sound capability on your

website would be beyond your technical or financial means then

I think you will change your mind after you finish reading this

article.

There are some online services that provide full audio support

but they charge monthly fees and this may be more than you want

to invest. However, if you want to add sound with flash buttons

to your site on a limited budget then there are several

moderately priced downloadable software packages that allow you

to do everything, without any technical know-how. They range in

price from $40 to $100. Visit the websites of

audiomakerpro.com, flashaudiowizard.com or soundstreamer.com,

and you will see how these programs work.

Now, if you are like me, a real cheapskate, and you don’t want

to spend any money at all but would like your website to talk,

then you can use the following method to install a streaming

audio file on your website.

First you have to record your message. I was able to use an old

software package (CoolEditPro) to record an mp3 message directly

on my computer. If you have an MP3 player with a recording

capacity you can just record your message and then save it to

your computer.

Suppose the message is saved as myintroduction.mp3. If you just

upload the file to your server and make a link to that file, it

will not stream but will download when someone clicks on the

link. In order to make it stream you have to do the following.

Open a text file and type one small piece of text:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/myintroduction.mp3 (give the

location where this file will be) then save this text file with

a name such as audiointro.m3u . It is only a text file but it

has an extension that makes it look like a sound file. Now,

upload the actual audio file myintroduction.mp3 and the text

file audiointro.m3u to your server.

In the place where you want someone to listen put a text link

or a graphic button linked to the file audiointo.m3u . When

someone clicks on this link they will hear the file

myintroduction.mp3 streaming from their speakers. It will be

played on the default MP3 player of that particular computer,

such as Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc.

This is poor-person’s streaming audio, but it works. The

advantage of the moderately priced packages or the higher

priced audio services is that the buttons are nicer and have

pause, stop and start functions.

Some audio services claim that adding audio to a website

increases conversion rates by 300%. Audio is a tool, if you use

it correctly it may indeed be just the thing you need to improve

the performance of your website. So choose the method that is

convenient for you and try it out.