VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Zach Meissner

Perchance, I'm looking for your esteemed eyes and ears for a brief moment for a website review.

This is a first for me, I've never had a website for 'personal branding', so any insight on what I would happen to be doing terribly wrong would be great.

I'm coming from the video and design world, so thus, that's mostly what I have now until I get some more voice samples.

Thank you very much!!

ZachMeissner.com

todd ellis · Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 2:29 pm Post subject:

I'll have to look when i get home ... But is crashes my Android browser.
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"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

Scott Pollak · Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 5:34 pm Post subject:

First impression: I love it!

I like everything about it.
There was just an article about single page websites extolling the virtue of the 'permanent' index with scrolling pages:

http://webdesignledger.com/tips/creative-techniques-for-single-page-websites?fb_action_ids=10151645293214985&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582

And voila! You have it.
Plus, not everyone should have their mug on their page. (I shouldn't; and DON'T). But yours works.

Contemporary site, easy to navigate, to the point.

Love it!
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Scott R. Pollak
Clients include Pandora, NPR Atlanta, Wells Fargo, Cisco, Humana, Publix, UPS, AT&T, HP, Xerox and more.

www.voicebyscott.com

Shiromi · Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 5:38 pm Post subject:

Hi Zach, I'm still a newbie, so I may be way off here but I felt as though your site lacked focus. You obviously have a multitude of talents, not just speaking into a mic, which I think is great. However, if I was somebody looking for a voice to hire, I might go to your site and be thoroughly confused. "Wait, I thought this guy was voice talent. Do I have the right person?" Do you see what I mean? Again, I am a newbie and certainly not a casting agent but this was my general impression.

It's a pain, but you might be better served by having a separate website for the voice work. You can talk about the video and design stuff on your VO site, but maybe not let it dominate the site. Otherwise I think the site looks fantastic. I wish I had you working with me a few months ago when I was building my site!

todd ellis · Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 8:09 pm Post subject:

aside from the android issue - i like it a LOT. very clean - simple - to the point. i will likely steal from it.
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"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

Zach Meissner · Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 11:22 am Post subject:

Todd, Scott, and Shiromi, thank you very much for your comments and critique!

Todd, good to know about the Android issue... It's a responsive design so it should flex with the width of the browser, or phone/tablet for that matter. So I will look into the android thing. And please, steal as much as you want Smile

Scott, my biggest fear with this single page version of a site was SEO. Prior to building this, I found a great article by Lance Blair for VO people here. Thanks Lance for that!
So your link showed me some more cool ideas for one page sites that can still be effective.

Shiromi, thank you for your input. I'm a newbie as well, and appreciate your feedback. I think ultimately I will have to decide what direction to push in if it's exclusively for VO. So, thank you for your reflections on that bit of things.

Thanks again everyone!

Velfin · Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:15 am Post subject:

On my iPhone and iPad the bulk of the page has a blank white area to the right - the pictures are my iPad, it's more pronounced on the iPhone.

I think it's a function of the embedded videos, because those are sticking out of the borders of the site.

There are a few places on my iPhone where the words overlap ("Enough said." and "Contact Me" under Voice; "Video And Motion Graphics" in that section's header)

This is a horribly nit-picky thing, but you flipped the audience in the two questions in "About Me." While the rest of the site is written as though you're talking to the reader, the questions are worded as though the reader is talking to you. If someone's been reading the other sections first and gets to that section, it sounds as though you're asking them why you should hire them. Smile

Easy to fix - change to "So, what exactly can I do for you?" and "Why should you hire me?"

Overall, I love the color and clean style. I found the video/motion graphics demo very confusing (and it looked like the only SFX you could do was the poof appearance) but I'm so not the audience for that.
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Kendra Hoffman
kendrasvoice.com

Zach Meissner · Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 12:37 pm Post subject:

Kendra,

Thanks for the detailed feedback! And the pictures!

Great catch about the voicing of the text, I certainly missed that.

About the video demo... I'm currently a motion graphics artist (slowly trying to break into the wonderful world of VO) and that's my demo reel. So it's not an audio sfx reel. The part with the fairy was composited, masked, and layered by me to make it look like the fairy just appears, then the sound was added later by someone else. Hopefully that makes more sense now. Thus the site kind of being a mixed bag of sorts Smile

...

Thanks again for the critique!
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Pax vobiscum

ZachMeissner.com