A sitewide podcast player can significantly impact your listeners’ podcast experience. Imagine your ideal listener browsing your other content and products as they listen to one of your podcast episodes!.
If you are serious about podcasting, then you need your own website, mobile app, or platform to promote your products, services, and other content that goes alongside your podcast, and you need a sitewide podcast player to ensure you can keep your listeners' attention, allowing them to listen to your podcast episodes while browsing your platform's other features and products.
Fortunately, we've seen powerful features and improvements built especially for podcasters over the past decade - mainly due to the dramatic increase in podcast listeners and the total number of podcasters.
But why are sitewide podcast players crucial for serious podcasters such as yourself?
Simply put, a sitewide podcast player allows a podcast episode to be played on one page and continue playing while the website, mobile app, or platform visitor browses your other pages, products, and promotions.
A sitewide podcast player should be continuous and not interrupted by the users' actions on your platform.Meaning that if they click off the original page where the podcast episode lives, the podcast will continue playing.
It sounds simple - but many podcast website builders often overlooked it when developing a podcast platform.
Below are some examples of some great sitewide podcast players:
Many of us use Spotify for our everyday music listening and our podcast listening. With a website, desktop app, and apps for mobile devices, they have focused heavily on ease of use and allowing users to get on with work, life, and relaxing while having a continuous podcast and music player on all three of their platforms.
Similar to Spotify and other podcasting apps, while listening to content, iOS users can browse Apple Podcasts to find interesting podcasts, new episodes of their favorite podcasts, or leave the app entirely and browse the endless other apps, social media, and websites to their heart's content.
This type of smart podcast player allows for seamless playing while going about your day.
FuseBox has its own 'Sticky Player' that may be implemented and integrated into your WordPress site or other website builders such as Webflow, Squarespace, or Wix.
Unfortunately, this 'sticky player' isn't available on their free tier and can be tricky to integrate due to the coding and plugin knowledge required to do so.
For podcasters who build their own websites specifically for their podcast, there are a few plugins and tools to enhance the podcast listening experience on their website.
WordPress offers lots of plugins for those that have their own WordPress website such as Blubrry PowerPress, Buzzsprout Podcasting, and more (Here's a helpful link to some of the best WordPress podcast plugins). Simple Podcast Press is another good option for a sitewide podcast player. However, podcasters on a budget will be disappointed to find that no free version or free plan of this plugin is available - purchasing a license is required!
These plugins can offer an excellent experience for your listeners. However, plugins may not be the best option for you - especially if you might struggle with coding or plugins (if you're anything like me, you will find this challenging and time-consuming).
WordPress sites can sometimes involve a lot of coding - CSS, HTML, PHP, and JavaScript are all used to build your website and make it as polished as you'd expect it to be. Even then, it can take a lot of maintenance. Many creators and podcasters often opt to spend thousands on hiring a custom developer to build a site using WordPress, which may be out of their budget.
As creators, we should focus on creating what matters to us - content, not worrying about the challenge of custom building your own podcast platform in an attempt to live up to other platforms and companies that are difficult to compete with.
A downside to using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other platforms with sitewide podcast players is that their platform is not YOUR platform. They belong to another brand, organization, or platform that controls what can and can't be said by you, how much money (if any!) you'll receive for advertisements on your podcast, and you are limited to how much of your branding you can show on their platforms as they like to focus on themselves a lot.
If you're creating a home for your podcast, you need to be sure that you have the functionality of the big brands while having the branding as your own.
Humans are curious creatures. We get bored easily and quickly, especially with countless distractions online, drawing us into the next big thing, the latest news, and newest trend.
Are you still reading this? Many will have already clicked off this post to visit our main site or leave altogether, and we're the exact same way when it comes to consuming content. We get bored of what we're watching and move on to the next thing, or we get weary of looking at the same page, so we leave and go to find something new to view.
This is precisely why a sitewide podcast player is valuable. If the listener gets bored of looking at the same page they can leave, but the podcast will continue to play, giving you, the podcaster, extra time to keep them listening with engaging content.
Many podcast website builders such as Podcastpage or Buzzsprout do not include sitewide podcast players, which means they only allow specific pages to play specific episodes. Suppose a visitor wants to browse other episodes, read your blog, or check out your other services. In that case, they’ll have to know to open a new tab to continue listening (which does not contribute to a good user experience) or leave the page entirely and through that stop listening to your podcast episode.
Users expect this functionality now. Even sites like YouTube use continuous video players that minimize the video you are watching to allow you to browse other content while keeping on viewing the original video seamlessly.
Regardless of your favorite podcast player or platform, providing your audience with one they love and come back to is essential. All the while, their expectations of a sitewide podcast player are met.
You may think that having a sitewide podcast player is not a priority right now. Maybe you've just started out and only have a handful of podcast episodes to browse. But what if you make it big like we all dream of doing?
Reaching a goal such as having thousands of listeners, a loyal fanbase, and your own brand built around your podcast and other content is a huge milestone, and you need to be sure you have the foundations to reach this goal quicker.
Building a business around your podcast means having other things to sell over and above putting your podcast out into the world. This could be a video course around your niche or the topic of your podcast; it could be a behind-the-scenes tour with your podcast hosts; or an exclusive lesson with them. Perhaps it may even be merchandise around your brand or other content such as blogs, videos, or music.
Ensuring that whatever you plan on upselling, you allow your listeners the opportunity to visit these products, courses, or other content and see their value while you talk about how great they are is a game-changer.
There's an expectation with mobile apps that contain podcast players that they include specific features like an audio player with speed controls, queueing up next episodes, and most importantly - an app-wide podcast player that continues playing after you leave the app.
It's simple things like continuous background play while you browse your other apps on your mobile device that are taken for granted and missed sorely when they aren’t there. Many apps such as YouTube go so far as to lock this feature behind a subscription paywall that users must pay to have videos play when not on the YouTube mobile app.
Apps also lock other features and quality-of-life improvements behind a paid subscription, such as removing annoying ads that you can't control or useful playback features that can improve the way your users consume your content.
Having an app-wide podcast player is vital to creating a seamless user experience for your listeners.
At SupaPass, we are committed to providing the user experience and user interface we all deserve (and expect)! By delivering a powerful sitewide podcast player that allows your listeners to enjoy your podcast and audio content while browsing your additional content offerings such as videos, blogs, courses, and more!
Better yet, our mobile apps deliver to you the ability to create your own branded native app for iOS and Android devices with the quality you'd expect from Netflix or Spotify. Our native apps provide your users with an enjoyable listening experience of your latest podcast episodes while also delivering the ability to browse their favorite apps, games, and social media all at the same time.
Podcasters and content creators like you are creating their own branded platform for all of their content in one place with an easy-to-build website and mobile app that comes with a sitewide podcast player to provide the best podcast experience your listeners deserve.
Get your own FREE SupaPass website, or try building your own mobile app to host your videos, music, courses, blogs, and other content by gifting yourself with our 14-day free trial.
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