Creating your VO website!

Why do you need a website for Voice Over? See below. And a bonus... Here are 11 website design tips including one tip to score 9X more traffic to your site.

Sooooo...

Why Do You Need a Website For Voice Over?

Having a professional voice over website makes great first impressions on potential clients from all over the world. It makes your services accessible 24/7, and most importantly, they can find you at anytime they want. It’s THE place where your demos, your brand, and your contact information can all live – just waiting for someone to visit. If they like what they see/hear, they will HIRE you! Just because you may not be selling any physical products, a strong web presence (which starts with your own website) is essential for attracting and impressing potential clients. If you’ve never done it before, you might think that setting up a website is a complicated and time-consuming process, but it’s actually very simple. If you’ve already got a website setup, great – just jump down to the tips. If you don’t own a website yet, here are 3 steps to get you started from nothing:

Step 1 – Buy a Domain Name

You can buy a domain name from one of the legitimate domain registrars such as GoDaddy or Domains.com. I prefer Domains.com because they don’t have 5 pages of upsell offers on checkout. Try to keep your website address as short and simple as possible. You want potential clients to be able to:

1) remember it, and

2) type it in easily to get to your site!

Avoid using hyphens or numbers as it’s difficult to promote verbally. If it’s available, go with a .com extension.

Step 2 – Setup Your Website Hosting

Hosting is basically renting storage space where all the files that make up your website will live. Hosting makes your website accessible on the internet. GoDaddy, WordPress, Wix or a host of others offer webhosting and website templates to design your website. Which leads to the next section, designing...

Step 3 – Designing Your VO Website

I cannot stress enough, the importance of making sure your site looks professional! To get started, brainstorm some ideas. Also, take a look at some sites you like (I found a lot of guidance and direction looking at https://www.founderjar.com/inspiration/voice-actor-websites/), and use them as examples to show to a web designer or a really good developer. If you really love a certain site, just get in touch with the site owner and ask who their designer was. You can also post a graphic design job on gig website like UpWork or Fiverr where designers will compete to create a design for you.

OK, now come the tips...

11 Voice-Over Website Tips

Let’s cover some tips specific to having a voice over website and how to get the most out of it. As a voice artist, you only need to keep a few things in mind for your website.

Tip #1 – Don’t use a Free Service

Your site has got to look the part, and look clean and professional – your online presence needs to make a great impression. Your website should look the part. That means making sure the design of your site shows you’ve made an investment, and not using a free service like Weebly. A free service is nice and free, but it cheapens your brand. Most free website services will add a tacky promotional write-ups and link back to their site. Also, there will be pop ups that look terrible and be distracting. That’s not something you want your visitors to see.

Tip #2 – Promote Your Website not a Pay-to Play Profile

Simply having a website isn’t enough. It’s far to easy to get complacent once you’ve got your site up and running. You need to promote it in order for it to truly work for you, so make sure you market your website as part of your overall strategy.

Here’s how: Add your website to your email signature, business cards and all of your marketing materials. You need to drive traffic to your site. A lot of voice over artists who don’t have their own website promote their profile page on a Pay-to-Play website (like Voices or Voice123), which is not a great idea for several reasons. By sending a potential client to your profile page on a site that isn't yours, lowers your chances of turning them into a client. In the process of having them view your profile, your potential client might end up browsing the site for another voice talent. Remember, websites like that have goals. Just as the goal of your website, to have someone listen to your demo and contact you, the Pay-to-Play site has their goals. It’s easy for a potential client to become distracted with all the voice talent options they have to choose from and soon forget they were ever on your profile page! In essence you’re sending clients to someone else. You want Pay-to-Play voice over websites to send YOU clients, not the other way around.

Tip #3 – Test Your Design

Remember to test your final design across multiple browsers as well as different platforms. What’s the point in launching a fantastic website that only a percentage of your clients can access or view? This is important, MAKE SURE your finished site is mobile-friendly, because more and more people are using smaller devices to browse. If it’s mobile-friendly they won’t have to zoom in to view your site. You want your future client to feel that working with you is easy right from the start. Most developers can make your site mobile friendly. Most website themes come that way nowadays too. But always check!

Tip #4 – Social Proof

Social proof works by showing people that have no experience with you (don’t know you or have any reason to trust you) that others have trusted you in the past. It’s one way to instantly impress your website visitors. Brandon Hunt, does an excellent job of this on his site: Seeing that the brands you trust have trusted him, automatically gives him credibility. Show your social proof near the top of the page in order to instantly impress a visitor. If you don't have it yet, don't worry. You'll get there. As you gain clients, just add them to your site. Always make sure you ask your client before you use their logo on your site. You don’t want to break a non-disclosure agreement.

Tip #5 – Demos First

First are your demos. As a voice actor, this is the number one reason someone has come to your site – to listen to your demos and find out whether they’re interested in hiring you or not. Since your demo is most likely what the visitor is after, make sure it’s easy to access, in fact, make playing your demo the easiest thing a visitor can do! Don’t make them click through a few pages to find your demos (don't make them work that hard, they will lose interest quick). Make the demo's front and center, and ensure the little sound bytes play with just one click. Also, as your voice and audio is so important to your site, make sure the audio player you’re using to host your demos (something easy like Soundcloud or VoiceZam) will work as expected across all devices, including mobile devices.

Tip #6 – Benefits, Not Features

You’ve probably heard about using benefits and not features in your marketing before. It’s definitely something you’ll want to consider when you’re writing out your website copy. But what does it really mean? Features tend to be the facts. Benefits are the result. Here’s an example to help explain it better: Imagine you were booking a hotel and the description said the room had a balcony. That’s a feature of the room. But the benefit of having a balcony would be: “To Enjoy dinner while watching the sunset over the water. ”You don’t care about the balcony. You care about what you can do with the balcony. To find your benefits, think of a feature and ask yourself: “Why would a client care?”. Keep drilling down that question to a final result, which is your benefit.

Tip #7 – Include Your Contact Info

Make it easy for a client to reach you. Contacting you to discuss why they’re looking for voice over in the first place, as well as finding out how you can help, must be your call-to-action, and the one thing you want a visitor to do. Make contacting you the obvious next step after listening to your demos.

Tip #8 – Go Easy on the Text

It’s true, you may have some visitors that will want to know all the details about your studio or get to know you better by reading a bio. However, for the most part, a visitor just wants to get to the meat and potatoes of your site – Which is your demo and then to contact you if they are interested. Don’t bore them or crowd the important things with information most of your visitors don’t care about. It’s fine to include additional information, but make sure it doesn’t interfere with the most important stuff they are looking for, your sound and your contact info.

Tip #9 – Use The Right Keywords

When someone asks you what you do for a living, what is the job title you give them? Maybe you call yourself a voice talent……a voice artist……a voice actor……or something else. Well if you want people to find you online, it doesn’t matter what you call yourself……it matters what they call you or think of you as... keywords people are using to search for the services you offer. As an example, according to Google the search term “voice actor” gets 9X more searches per month than “voice artist”.Do your research to discover how people are searching for voice over help. Then optimize your site to include those keywords.

Tip #10 – Include Your Photo? Don't include your Photo?

Should you include your photo on your website? I think so. There may be a certain mystery behind wondering what face matches the voice (kind of like listening to the radio and wondering what the DJ looks like). But I’ve also heard that if your photo doesn’t match what a client is picturing for the role, they won’t even listen to your demo. That may be something to consider, but I think having a photo makes you seem more approachable, and transparent. Choose a high quality, professional head shot (or head and shoulders shot), that shows you with a smile. Here's a bonus tip, I've heard that showing yourself in your studio environment is a plus. Makes you real, human, etc. Think professional and approachable!

Tip #11 – Include Testimonials

When you buy something online, do you read the product reviews? I do. If you are like most people, you probably do too. It seems that people trust other people’s reviews more than they trust a company – even if it is a good brand. They want to know they are getting their money’s worth before they purchase something. The same applies to voice over work. Testimonials are great for several reasons. It helps your future client feel more comfortable working with you. They don’t know how many jobs you have or haven’t done. So even if it is only your 10th voice over job, having testimonials gives you a little more street credit. You only need a few (3-4) powerful testimonials to help build that trust factor. Avoid using too many testimonials as it may become overwhelming for a visitor. Just pick your favorites that show you’ve solved a client’s pain point. As an added bonus, asking a client for a testimonial after you have finished a job, is another way to stay in touch, ensure they’re satisfied with your work and thank them for their business.