VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Mike Harrison]

One can only do so much on their own with minimal experience (and patience) and WYSIWYG website software. Yeah, it was sufficient for a number of years, but then it was time to move on. And, boy, it sure is a great thing when one friend offers to help out when you're not up to speed with the new technology, and another friend lends hugely objective advice.

So if you'd been to the old site... forget it. Here's the (advertising cliché) 'new and improved' site. Comments, suggestions and recipes welcome.

Oh, and please wipe your feet. I just cleaned.

http://mike-harrison.com

Thanks!
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Mike
Male Voice Over Talent
I have taken leave of my sensors.

[bobsouer]

Mike,

It looks very clean and easy to navigate. My only suggestion is that the group of people that rotates into the main page seems a little odd, unless that's you and your team.
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Be well,
Bob Souer (just think of lemons)
The second nicest guy in voiceover.
+1-724-613-2749
Source Connect, phone patch, pony express

[Mike Harrison]

Thanks, Bob. Yeah, the people. Finding the right images for the subject matter has not been easy. I've been trying to stay with photographs for all the images, but I'll probably have to resort to stylized text or some other illustration.

I appreciate the feedback!
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Mike
Male Voice Over Talent
I have taken leave of my sensors.

[Diane Maggipinto]

i like your new logo! haven't had a chance to navigate your site but i will agree with bob about the people pic.
i would call it, um, cheeeezy.
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sitting at #8, though not as present as I'd like to be. Hello!

www.d3voiceworks.com

[Gregory Best]

Mike I agree with the others on the pix, plus I am at a local community college (waiting for my wife who is teaching in another room) and am on a laptop via the college's wifi and they take forever to load.

Oops, I removed a comment I had here about reverb on all the tracks. I realized it must be this simple setup with earbuds. I listed to demos I am familiar with and they all sound like they are processed with lots of reverb. Won't use this as a road rig. It would be good for singers who want reverb in the monitor mix - LOL.
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Gregory Best

greg@gregorybest.com

[Mike Sommer]

Less is more. Stick with one image.
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The Blog:
http://voiceoveraudio.blogspot.com/

Acoustics are counter-intuitive. If one thing is certain about acoustics, it is that if anything seems obvious it is probably wrong.

[Mike Harrison]

Diane: Thanks for not mincing your words. I'm not crazy about the thumbs-up crowd either; I was (and still am) desperately looking for an image that speaks to (among others) corporate prospects and says 'Positive Results,' or something similar. I can't tell you how much time I've spent on iStockPhoto.com doing that search.

Greg: Thanks for the heads-up on the image load time. While I specifically asked others (via email) about load time and didn't receive any negative feedback, I've reduced the images' file sizes. Average page load time now - according to several online tools - is about 6 seconds.

But your other comment - abut the reverb - puzzles me. While one or two segments of one or two demos might have a bit of reverb (but I don't think so), none of the demo tracks are processed with reverb.

Mike: Thanks. I now agree. This, however, was a bad choice I made in selecting a Wordpress theme. This theme's home page rotates images, either by dissolving or sliding from one to the next. The images represent some of the pages on the site. There is no way to eliminate this from the template.

I have my work cut out for me, don't I?
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Mike
Male Voice Over Talent
I have taken leave of my sensors.

[bransom]

If you can set the image change to dissolve, you could probably save the same image three times with different file names. Then it would dissolve to effectively the same image, over and over. If the dissolve works properly, you'll never notice the difference.
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Bob Ransom
"I really need a pithy quote here."

[Gregory Best]

Mike the reverb has to be on my end and in the set up I was listening on. I can't firgure it out. I listened to things I know have no reverb and heard it on them too. I was using earbuds that I seldom use. I have some realtively new (hate to admit it) hearings aids that may be complicating it. Still getting used to them. I use the T-coil function if I use cans in the studio. Mike it wasn't you. I listened later without the earbuds ands don't hear it. Isn't techology grand?

PS - the pictures load quickly now.
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Gregory Best

greg@gregorybest.com

[kevinpowe]

Hi Mike! Take my feedback with a grain of salt, but here are the things that occurred to me when looked at the site (...procrastinating on doing audio editing)

I'd agree with others about replacing the image rotation with one image. And on your home page, what I really wanted to see was an image of you! (same on your "Contact Mike" page) Maybe consider getting in front of a photographer?

You've got a great clean layout, and great navigation, but it takes me about ten seconds to find out who it's about. The first mention of your name on the page is down in your (admittedly excellent) referral. I'd definitely think about a header on your home page with your name.

I'd suggest changing the "Effective Solutions" menu link to something a little more specific - effective solutions is a very generic description for what you're doing. Solutions for what?

On most of the pages, you'd probably be better served by removing the image and just going with text on the page. (or at least making the images smaller) On the FAQ page, for example, what I'm there for primarily is the text in the FAQ.

Also, I hope it's not presumptuous, but if you're looking after your website going forward, a great short book I'd definitely recommend picking up is Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think. I have a well-worn copy on my bookshelf, and it's INVALUABLE.

Also, if there's more great stuff in your resume that makes you look good, I'd definitely suggest putting it up on another page as well as making it available as a download link - more likely to get people looking at it that way.

On a separate note, you're probably across it already, but Google Analytics is a great way of keeping track of what people are looking at and how they're finding you, if you're not already using it. Definitely recommend putting that on top of the site as well!
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http://kevinpowe.com
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[Mike Sommer]

Kevin,

I agree with most of what you say. Websites for the Voice Actors are are nothing more than a convenient conduit for get ones demos out to ever busy agents, and directors. These are people that are listening hundreds of demos and auditions a day. So we must contour our web pages for them, so the sire is intuitive- so the used does not have to think.

The website must:
1) Load quickly
2) Be uncluttered
3) Easy to navigate
4) Not give the prospective client a reason not to hire you.

Of all the items on this list, number four being the most important. Though we are all curious about what a voice actor looks like; unless one is a stage or film actor also, the headshot should not be included. There have been many situations where actors have lost a VO gig because of how they looked. Some people can move beyond the physical appearance, when trying to create an illusion, even though the illusion is auditory.

Hey Mike,
What was the World's Fair exhibit that planted the VO seed?
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The Blog:
http://voiceoveraudio.blogspot.com/

Acoustics are counter-intuitive. If one thing is certain about acoustics, it is that if anything seems obvious it is probably wrong.

[kevinpowe]

Wow - I had no idea that could happen, Mike. My newbie status is showing.

Thanks for pointing that out so gently!
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http://kevinpowe.com
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