VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

What works, what doesn't? What makes you cringe, what makes you go meh, what gets a green checkmark? Thank you in advance!

http://lanceblairvo.com/
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and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!

richvoice · Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 4:51 pm Post subject:

Hey Lance, I can't tell you what's good or what's bad, I don't know enough about how potential clients view voice talent websites to say one way or the other. These are simply my impressions as a general web user:

1. Gee, this is taking a long time to load (not sure if you can do anything easy to fix that, I'm sure it has to do with hosting and server load; second load was much faster, presumably stuff got cached).
2. So, so much text in such a small, small font.
3. Tags, tags, and more TAGS! What are all these tags for??
4. Where do I end up if I click on this collage picture? Oh, it opens the picture as a .png. In the same tab, so now I have to click back to get back to the website. Huh.

Again, I can't say what's good or bad. Well, I think #1 and #4 are probably bad regardless, but I don't know about #2 and #3. Maybe potential clients want to read that much (and are less sensitive to small fonts than me), and your user base might love having the tags available. Just my initial reactions.
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http://www.richvoiceproductions.com
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ricevoice · Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 4:51 pm Post subject:

Overall I like it... it's clean and easy to navigate. Maybe customize the color of the demo player so it's the same shade of blue you used in the banner up top?

Since the demo player is front-and-center on the home page, I'm thinking the Demos age won't get much traffic... which is too bad because that Venn Diagram is really cool and something I haven't seen a v-o use.

There's an awful lot of text on the home page. Maybe some of that could be replaced by moving the Venn Diagram?

Also, I didn't see any contact info, and I'm not a fan of contact forms... matter of personal preference I suppose.
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Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

Rich - thank you about the collage. That is a total failure and I'll fix that. There's a 'Contact' link page with the info (not forms) at the top menu, but many people don't seem to notice that (again, I'll fix that).

The intent of the demo page is to have a place where all my demos for niches can be saved without slowing down the landing page - but the new player messed up that idea!

I'm lukewarm on the tags. They help to navigate the blog. Some clients love it, most don't notice, and it's clutter.

Thank you both!

EDIT: I made a lot of the suggested changes. The player is loading a little faster now, but still too slow. I've noticed that the fonts look huge in Firefox and IE but tiny in Chromium browsers - so I tried to hit a happy medium. Also figured out how to not have the pictures go to self-links (D'oh!)
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and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!

Bish · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2015 7:07 am Post subject:

I must say that I thought I had misunderstood the question. I looked at the site and thought it looked quite clean and had a nice style. Then I realized it wasn't a blog.

I'm afraid that at first glance the site comes across (at least, to me) as a blog platform... the layout and text look fine for that purpose, but I don't see it as a main site VO/client discovery platform.
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Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

Thank you Peter, that is very helpful. I will arrange my contact info up front and have demos and video first, and then only essential text on the landing page.
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and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!

Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

Ok, as of 1/25 at 7pm EST I've made a boat-load of changes. One could say that I have a plethora of changes. Smile

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Skype: globalvoiceover
and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!

richvoice · Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2015 9:21 pm Post subject:

Seems a lot cleaner to me. Still too much text for my taste, but again, I have little insight into how potential customers will view that. At least it's all relevant, and it seems like it's all in a bigger font, which is a plus to my eyes.

Is the "Home" link intentionally in a different font and/or in a different style (bold, mixed case) than the rest of the navigation links? Looks like a mistake to me, I'm used to seeing similar nav links.

The "Leave a reply" thing also seems really odd to me on a home page. Are you going to be keeping a running list of comments on your home page, like on a Facebook post? I don't get it. But one might argue that I don't get a lot of stuff like that...
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Rich
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@RichMillerVO

Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

Thanks! The 'Home' being bold is part of the current theme (WP site). I like that, but I can see how it's unorthodox.

As for the 'Leave a Reply' it is clunky having a form on the home page - except that clients fill it out and invite me to work for them! I will follow up on modifying that.
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and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!

richvoice · Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 7:03 am Post subject:

Hey, if someone is using it to invite you to work for them, it's working! Smile

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Rich
http://www.richvoiceproductions.com
@RichMillerVO

Fran McClellan · Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 8:01 am Post subject:

Hi Lance,

I think the site looks great. I love that the demos and video examples are front and center. I have to agree, though, with the previous responses that there is a little too much text for my liking (I realize that may be better for SEO) and it does come off looking very "blog-like".
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Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

Hi Fran! Thanks. I pared down the text quite a bit, will pare it down some more, and got the info up front in the header bar.

And I'm checking everything with the mobile version as well. Thanks folks!!! Such a big help! Smile

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Skype: globalvoiceover
and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!