TubeNet

The thread about websites and automatic music got me to thinking. A website that I have designed, uses music in the SECOND page.

I would like to ask you guys a favor: Please see if you think my use of music is off-putting.

http://coppelia-enterprises.com

I have set up a poll, and any other suggestions would be welcome.

The sousa player in the marching band is out of step!!

I normally don't like music on web pages and find most of it annoying and a waste of bandwidth. However... yours seems relevant and is tolerable.

Well, it seems that the vote is clear, so far.

Anyone else care to weigh in?

If you MUST have music, yours is a pretty good choice. BUT...

Your site should exist to provide your reader with information, not to indulge your fancy for function-free gadgetry.

You seem to be in the "bands for all occasions" business, so say on page 1. Get rid of that pointless and irritating content-free splash screen. Most of the info on your "about us" page needs to be on page 1.

Waiting for page 2 to load is a drag, especially since it is the hub you have to keep returning to, so you get the same delay over and over. Get rid of the auto-loading music, and the distracting and very ugly animation.

One thing guaranteed to tick me off royally is text that disappears BEFORE I click it. Like most people, I use the cursor as an eye-guide, so the cursor is usually on the text I want to read. Having text vanish as soon as the cursor hits it is a military-grade PITA. The text should brighten when you hover on it - making it disappear is just plain dumb.

Also a minor irritation - the text overflows the box on the left. This is probably browser specific, so it may well look good on your screen, but it's messy on mine
(I'm using the Firefox browser on Ubuntu)

I don't understand the purpose of the "Enter site" lead-in page. Your second page is effectively the first *real* page. Every extra click could reduce the number of people willing to keep going into your Web site.

+1 to all of the above!

A well-designed webpage should look professional, and be easy to navigate. It should be easy for users to find the relevant information they are looking for.

Your page is easy enough to navigate, which is good. If I want to hire one of your ensembles, I can readily find contact information. As someone who has recently been looking at a LOT of vendor webpages for my upcoming wedding, I can tell you that I *really* appreciate a website that gives some sort of pricing before I send an email. It's good to know if the services I'm looking at fit within my budget without having to email first (which sometimes can take a few days for a reply). I can understand if you don't feel comfortable doing that, but from my position, it really helps.

I agree that the splash page is unnecessary. When I go to the site, I want to find the relevant info quickly. Forcing me to look at a useless page before I get to that information is tedious. I'd get rid of it.

Autoplay is something I generally dislike. Think about it this way; if someone takes a few minutes at work to look at your page, they might not appreciate having the music start blaring automatically.

Also, some of your YouTube links play automatically on your ensemble pages, too. I would change this. When I went to look at the quintet page, I saw two youtube embeds, so I clicked one of them to start it. The other one was set to autoplay, and I ended up having both play at the same time. Not a huge deal, but kind of annoying. I'd rather be able to choose for myself which, if any, I want to hear first.

I don't want to sound like I'm being too harsh; I think overall you did a great job, and the few issues I have with the page are small. I just think making those few changes would make the overall page much more user-friendly, which will help you get more gigs. Best of luck!

-TM (whose fiancé builds webpages for a living)

the speakers on the computer i use for web browsing are deliberately disabled, because i don't like web sites that have automatically-playing music, so, for me, the music doesn't make any difference...

however, the fact that i don't like web sites with automatically-playing music must count for something...

Thanks. The message seems clear!