This week we’re continuing the series on having a website for your voice-over business.
So far we’ve covered, if and when you need a website for your business, how to pick a domain name you’ll love for years to come and setting up the right hosting so your site and demos load faster.
This week I wanted to talk about some of the tools I’ve used that can help make it easier to put your voice-over website together.
Before we get into the tools for actually building your site, I want to cover some of the apps and websites that can help give you inspiration for your site design.
Because in order to build the website, you’re going to want to have an idea of what you want it to look like, first.
So a good way to start is to just find colors you like. One way to do that is using a website called Coolors.co
They have a color palette generator you can use - just hit your spacebar and it’ll cycle through different color themes.
There’s also a Google Chrome Browser Extension called “ColorPick EyeDropper” you can use on any website you’re on to find out what color it is. So if you’re on a website or see an ad or whatever, you can use it to grab the color code.
Either way, look for 2 or 3 colors that go together and that you like and save their color codes for later.
Once you have some colors in mind, it’s time to see what fonts you're attracted to. Maybe you like something fancy, or casual or modern looking, it really just depends on the image you’re going for.
Google has a bunch of free fonts you can browse through.
Or, again, there’s a Chrome extension you can use called “WhatFont”, so if you’re on website and like the font - you can use it to click the text and it’ll tell you the font name.
If you just want to see some websites to help give you an idea of what looks good, there’s a website called Dribbble. They have a landing page section you can browse where you might get an idea for a layout you like.
You won’t find site designs made for voice-over, but it’ll still give you an idea of good design.
Next up is a tool that is half inspiration and half design, and that is Canva.
I’ve used Photoshop for years, but Canva makes graphics easier because they have hundreds of beautiful templates to start from, including logos.
So if you don’t already have a logo and you need one for your website, you can goto Canva and search for a logo and you’ll get a library of graphics to start with, then you can customize it to fit your needs.
A couple things to keep in mind when it comes to you logo:
First, I would avoid using a microphone in the logo, as it’s been overused.
And you want to have a logo you like, but also keep in mind your logo on it’s own isn’t going to bring in work, so don’t fall into the trap of spending hours or days tweaking a logo. In the long run, it isn’t worth taking up that much time.
With Canva, you could also even build an entire website, but I don’t recommend it because it’s pretty limited in what you can do with it.
Same thing with WIX and SQUARESPACE - they are easy to use, but aren’t ideal for a voice-over website and are limited in what they can do.
Also, there are pre-built themes you can buy but these aren’t made for voice-over and based on my experience they take a long time to customize them to work for voice-over. But just in case you want to check them out, Envato elements and Theme forest are two places you can get website themes..
OK, now that should give you ideas on getting inspiration for your website design, now let’s get into the tools for actually building your website:
I use WordPress as the website base. It’s free and it’s popular - around 43% of all websites are running on WordPress. But it’s not easy to use on it’s own.
So with WordPress, I also use a Plugin from Thrive Suite, which is a drag and drop website builder. This makes it easy to design and edit your website, you don’t have to worry about knowing how to do any coding and you can build pretty much anything you can imagine. It’ll take some getting used to, but once you learn it - you’ll be building your website in no time.
Thrive Suite isn’t the only page builder out there - You can try others like Elementor, Divi and Beaver Builder. The main thing is to just find one that works for you.
And one final tool when it comes to building your website is the VO Demo Player Plugin. It’s built for WordPress and made for voice-over demos, you can customize the colors and fonts to make it exactly what you want. It’s perfect for playing your demos on your website.
And I should also mention, you can get the VO Demo Player Plugin for free, it’s part of the VO Website Template, which is the website template specifically made for voice-over, that is customized for you to match your brand.
So if you decide, you want your voice-over website up and running within days, all done for you, go here to see everything that’s included.
Alright, there you go, these are the tools that I’ve used to build websites.
I hope this helps. And if you happen to build a website, leave a comment with a link and let me know.
