Using audio and video on websites is increasing at a phenomenal rate, especially amongst internet marketers. While some people call it as “just a fad that will pass away soon”, I do not agree. While new innovations are presented all the time, audio and video are here to stay for a long time to come. Technological advances may reduce its usage but will never eliminate it. There are several obvious (and some non obvious) reasons why you should really use audio and video on your website. Some of them are:

1. Internet connections are now available at much higher speeds and cheaper rates, facilitating faster streaming and download for your visitors.

2. Computers are also cheaper and faster. So also is the RAM chip (memory card) which is an added advantage for streaming multimedia more smoothly.

3. Hosting accounts are now available with higher band width and are much cheaper than what was available only a couple of years ago. You can get a lot of bandwidth and disk space for under $5 per month. If you expect a lot of views and have a tight budget, you can even consider using free services from sites like youtube and hundreds of others (searching on google will give you plenty of options).

4. It is now very easy and cost effective to create a good quality audio / video file. Microphones, digicams and digital cameras are now available at better qualities, higher resolutions and are also much cheaper.

5. Audio and video allows you to give a better demonstration of your message that you want to convey to your website visitors, as long as they're scripted well and recorded properly. You can give a live demonstration of a product with three dimensional views; show the working of software by recording the screen with the software in action, etc.

6. Another reason which I consider to be of utmost importance is - it will allow you to grab (and keep) the attention of your visitor for the period of time required to get your message across. With the growing scarcity of attention (the A.D.D. syndrome and the bombardment of ads being primarily responsible), this is a big reason to use audio /video in your websites. The average attention span of humans has fallen to 5 minutes and seven seconds, as opposed to almost 12 minutes, 10 years ago. It's also more convenient to watch a video instead of reading content. On a marketing angle this is a plus point as more of the visitor's senses are exposed to your message which works out to be more effective.

7. A lot of free softwares and some low cost ones make the job of producing audio and video much easier, as well as converting one audio /video file format into another.

8. Seeing the growing demand of multimedia, opportunists have taken full advantage and now there are plenty of audios and videos that can be purchased either with source codes and modified to your requirements, or are made generic and can be used directly without going through the hassles of recording.

9. Since it takes more effort to have multimedia on your website, not many will walk that extra mile. So it does make sense by taking that effort and being different from the others. If your competitors are not using multimedia, it is only a matter of time when they start doing this; so why not be the first in your market and take the undue advantage? Additionally, this effort also shows that you're serious about your business and gives you more credibility.

I hope you now realize that it does make sense to use audio and video in your websites to boost exposure, sales, uniqueness and overall effectiveness of your websites. While it does take that extra effort, it's worth the returns!