1. Can you tell someone how to get to your site without having to spell anything?
2. Are the URLs human-readable or are they full of special characters and dynamically-generated gobbledygook?
3. Do you have an About page?
4. Can visitors tell what your site is about without visiting your About page?
5. Is your contact information readily available on every page – or at least from every page?
6. If not, what are you hiding from? Your customers?
7. Is your home page doing you any favors or is it merely an “Enter Site” gateway?
8. Do you have an RSS Feed?
9. Did you decorate for the holidays?
10. When is the last time you added new content?
11. Why has it been so long?
12. Is your site ranking highly in search engines for relevant keywords?
13. What about for your name? Or your business name?
14. What are your relevant keywords, anyway?
15. Is anyone linking to you these days?
16. If not, what can you do to make this happen?
17. Who are you linking to these days?
18. How long does it take your site to load at your mother’s house?
19. Do you need to download anything on her computer to even see your site?
20. What is the single most important thing you want a visitor to do?
21. Is that clear from looking at your site?
22. Does your site look professional, or does it look like a teenager’s MySpace page?
23. Do you link out to your other web presences (social network profiles, Twitter account, YouTube page, Flickr photostream)?
24. Is it clear what content is protected by Copyright and what is free to take and re-use?
25. What one thing can you do to your site today to increase visitors?
26. Are you commenting on blogs and building relationships with other site-owners in your industry or niche?
27. How does your site look on a mobile device?
28. An iPhone?
29. Blackberry?
30. Cheapo-plastic-freebie phone?
31. Amazon Kindle?
32. Is your site usable with images turned off?
33. On a computer with no Flash or Javascript?
34. In every web browser?
35. How many clicks does it take for a visitor to give you money?
36. Is your site “fine for the moment” or is it flexible enough to be fine for the next 5 years?
37. Are your ads annoying?
38. How easy is it for a visitor to leave a comment or write a review?
39. Can your site run without you?
40. Is the entire site backed up?
41. Is the important stuff backed up multiple times in multiple formats in multiple physical locations?
42. How long would it take to turn your entire site navy blue with white text?
43. Is this time measured in seconds (awesome), minutes (good), or hours (you’re doing things wrong)?
44. Is your branding consistent between your site, your printed material, your storefront, and you as a person?
45. Do your product descriptions sound like they were written by a person or by a mentally-ill robot programmed with the vocabulary of an out-of-work Madison Avenue ad guy whose last account was for one of those food processors they sell on TV at 2am?
46. Do you care about your website?
47. Is it important to you?
48. Are your readers and customers important to you as people, not just as eyeballs with wallets?
49. Would you be sad – actually sad – if your site disappeared tomorrow?
50. What would you do if it did?

About oh….ten years ago I remember landing on a website and all of a sudden there was music playing

How cool I thought that was. I remember thinking “man, this Internet is really awesome!” Well that was 10 years ago when music on a website was the new thing and being surprised or I should say annoyed by music today on a website is so…….well, 10 years ago.

You see here’s the thing. If I wanted music I would’ve gone to my iTunes or went to a site that specializes in delivering music that I like to listen to and therein lies the real problem with having music play on your website. The odds that many people will not like the type of music you play are pretty high. Some say “well it’s just elevator music and it’s easy listening“. Hmmm, and how many people would say that they love elevator music? I mean, how many times is that phrase “elevator music” used in our jokes?
It doesn’t really matter what the genre, it’s going to alienate somebody and in today’s eCommerce environment you can’t afford to alienate anyone.

I recently ran a poll on Facebook to more than 400 industry professionals and asked the question “How do you respond when you land on a website and automatically hear music?” Every single vote was “I scramble to find the off button!” The ironic thing is that most of the time that button is not easily found and you’re getting angry or frustrated just seeking for it. When you finally find it hidden in the bottom corner of the website in tiny little letters you click it and hope the surprise sound didn’t wake up the baby because the night before you were watching YouTube and had the volume turned all the way up.

Ok, so you move on to the next page on the website and Wham!
The music starts again! That’s it! Goodbye!

Are you starting to get the picture?

The Internet is an “On Demand” environment and music that I did not ask for is unwelcome and bothersome. This goes for any other weird sounds too. I was on a site the other day and all I could hear was the sounds of a forest with birds and everything. I had my headphones on listening to my iTunes while searching for something and I thought I was hearing things. I was pretty certain I didn’t download anything like that to my iTunes library. Then I realized it was coming from the dang site I was on. Arghhh!

The last thing about music on your website and I think the most important thing is what I began with. It gives your consumers the wrong impression about you. It conveys that you are out of date and out of touch with the ever evolving technology that’s not only available but has become what Internet consumers expect from their online experience. They expect the new not the old. They expect the revolutionary not the nostalgic. They expect to get what they ask for and not be surprised by what they didn’t ask for.

Let’s leave the music to iTunes. Impress your consumers with the power of your content and the value of your product.
Elevator music belongs in……well, the elevators.