Your website is the FACE of your internet radio station.
Humans judge faces. Likewise, they’ll judge your station’s website considering how it looks and behaves.
Autoplay is when your radio player plays automatically without any action from the user. It can have more impact on your visitor's experience than you think.
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Why you should not enable autoplay
1. Forcing people to listen is annoying
When you're FORCED to listen to something, it's never fun even if you like the song. Like someone blasting music in the subway using an iPhone speaker.
The same situation may unfold when a listener visits your website and sound automatically blares from their speakers.
People want to choose what to hear and when to hear it.
The potential listener may close your page. And if they have multiple tabs open, they’ll frantically search for the audio offender. And shut you down!
That’s like getting slapped on the face with a mouse or finger.
2. Because of limited data plans
Data is precious.
And most mobile users are on limited data plans. For someone determined to conserve their data, autoplay is a bother.
3. Web browsers are restricting autoplay
Some browsers have in place autoplay restrictions that will block autoplay features of muted videos and audio.
To learn more, we have an article covering current autoplay restrictions and how they might affect you.
When to use autoplay
When a visitor expresses a clear intent.
Let’s assume you have this button on your radio station’s home page.
Listen Now
When a visitor taps or clicks it, they expect music. Or, your booming voice counting down top 40 songs of the week.
The button executes their intent.
So in such a case:
Go ahead an enable autoplay. We also provide code to make the HTML5 player appear as a popup in a new browser window.
Be kind to your precious visitors with our HTML Player
Do you know what makes our HTML5 audio player really great?
It's polite to your listeners by allowing you to disable the autoplay feature. In fact, it's disabled by default!
Remember to enable it only if it respects your listeners' intent. Offering them a good experience is a good way of retaining them and having them want to come back.
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