Teens today spend, on average, 8.5 hours every day consuming media. Multimedia can increase the appeal of the website, while also offering visitors different ways to connect with and explore the site content. In Chapter 3 you will find tips, resources, and tools for using media designed by others on your website without infringing on copyright.

Hook your audience - Use humor, surprise, inquiry, a short vignette. Be creative and social - Break away from the traditional mold of educational multimedia. Use media in an ethical and legal manner - If you upload a video to YouTube with a popular song as the background music, it will be flagged and taken down. Use your own original art or Creative Commons works with attribution (explore Chapter 3 for more information about finding and using Creative Commons media)

Don’t Distract - get rid of extraneous information, stories, images, sounds, or content. Use text, arrows, bolding, sound effects, or other tools to signal key information. Keep in Conversational - Speak in a conversational tone. Use plain, easy-to-understand language (review the Writing for the Web chapter for tips on how you can improve your audio or video scripts)

Simply visit Vocaroo.com and select “Click to Record” to start creating an audio file. You can now download your recording as an mp3 or WAV file or share it via a link. Using Audacity, you can export your recording in various formats, including mp3, WAV, and OGG. A properly made video will mesmerize your website visitors. Designing a video can be time consuming, and sometimes frustrating, but with the right tools and design skills, anyone can make captivating videos. The following section features two web-based design tools for creating videos: Adobe Spark and Screencastify.

Screencastify is a screen recording extension for Google Chrome. It is a light-weight, powerful, and easy-to-use screen recorder. Research has shown that images are more powerful and memorable than text. Emotional images can change people's behavior, while similarly charged words do not. Every page on your website should have at least one image to complement and enrich the text.

Pablo is a commonly used tool for creating quick web banners with custom text. Canva offers pre-made templates that you can customize, such as posters, social media graphics, infographics, and flyers. Spark is similar to Canva in regards to the creation of images. You can easily integrate Creative Commons and Public Domain images into your graphic.