Why your radio website needs more than a player

If you can’t manage to grow your listeners on a stable basis, people listen for 5 minutes and disconnect, traffic has spikes of visitors that never comes back, and you’re maybe throwing promo budget on Meta and Google Ads but your radio doesn’t take off, the reason may not be the quality of the music.

In fact, if you look at established radio stations, you can easily find out what they have that you’re missing, that can truly make the difference.

Now, we know this sounds like a big work, and requires an expert technical eye to get to some reliable result, and maybe you have a small community radio or hobby radio and can’t spend a week to make a serious analysis, but this is why we did it for you, and we’re here with the results you need.

No effort required, just sit down and read. Or… watch the video!

You can have great music, good microphones, a solid streaming setup and a nice studio. But when somebody discovers your station online, what happens next?

For many small and hobby radios, the website is still basically a logo, a player and a few links. The problem is that pressing Play is only the beginning. 

Watch the video

Everybody can put a player on a page

A player is essential. In fact, when we analyzed 2,088 active Pro Radio websites, 98.6% had one.

No surprise there. You need to make listening easy.

But established radio websites usually do much more than simply provide a stream. They give listeners something to do while listening, and a reason to come back later.

Give listeners a role

Requests, dedications, voice messages, charts and voting turn the website into part of the radio experience.

In our study, 70.4% of active Pro Radio websites used Dedications, Voiceline, or both.

That does not mean adding random widgets everywhere. It means asking a very simple question: what can my listener do here besides press Play?

Give them a reason to return

The second part is equally important.

Schedules, shows, podcasts, replays, news, events and recently played music make the website useful even when somebody isn’t currently listening.

Your website can tell people what is happening now, what is coming next, what they missed and what they can discover.

Keep the structure simple

You don’t need a huge website. A strong starting point is simply:

• Listen: make the live stream immediate.
• Participate: requests, messages, votes or charts.
• Follow: shows, schedule, news and replays.
• Return: always give the listener something new to discover.

Your website is part of the station

You don’t need the budget or team of a national broadcaster.

Start with what makes your station worth listening to, then make that experience continue online. Make listening easy, participation obvious, and always give people one good reason to come back.

Explore the website shown in the video: Joy Radio — included with Pro Radio Plus.

See what Pro Radio Plus includes

With Pro Radio Plus, the engagement tools, premium plugins and templates are already included, together with our new Plus radio demos. The current Anniversary offer is $99/year, with the price locked while your subscription stays active.

Learn more about Pro Radio Plus at this link

Prefer a one-time license? Explore the Pro Radio WP designs.