Actor Tip: Is your website industry ready?

Resist the temptation to make your website artsy or cute and make it a professional landing where someone can give you a job on the spot. Your website is for agents, casting directors and directors who need to decide in 2 mins whether or not you're right for a role and if I should cast you or call you in for an audition.

Imagine I'm a casting director trying to decide if you're right for a part. I have 60 roles to cast in the next 48 hours. I need to be able to access your reel, resume, headshot in about 10 seconds. I click on the link you sent me and it has a black, red or some other dark color background which makes it pretty for your friends, but difficult to read for a busy professional trying to make snap decisions.

Or I click on your link and see a lovely bio about your life and your dreams and then I have to look through navigation and search for your reel, then click to another page for your resume, then to another page to wade through 4 or 5 pictures to figure out what you look like now. I've now spent 15 minutes searching your website and I still don't have one page I can send to the director where he can find everything he needs to see to make a decision. Remember directors are making these decisions while on set or in a 90 min casting session where they have to make final decisions for every single role on the show.

If you're website has dancer, singer, commercial, credits and not enough acting credits to give me an idea of how to cast you, I don't know who you are and what you're selling. If you want to be an actor, create a website that sells what kind of actor you want to be right now and why someone should hire you. Create a website where I can figure this out in about 15 seconds on your mainpage. Want to be a TV/Film actor, then reel and those credits should be a the top of your resume. When a CD googles your name, the first things that should come up is your IMDB where they can find your headshot/reel/resume and contact info. The second thing that should come up is your webpage. There should be one single page where I can find your headshot/resume/reel/contact info in one place without search the site.

Think about it, when you go to a website, the first thing you look at is the main page, and rarely anything else. If a CD has got 60 roles to cast in 48 hours, they are not searching your website and you've just lost out on an audition or even worse, a job offer.