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Site Review: PictureFrameGuys.com

It’s been a while since I’ve done a site review so I thought I would dust off my site review worksheet and give the Picture Frame Guys some things to think about.

First Impressions

Without a doubt the first thing you notice about this picture frames website is the beautiful design. Most sites I review need a complete redesign, but if the PictureFrameGuys.com were my client, I wouldn’t change anything about the design. I love the layered look of the picture frames behind the flash header. I also like the mouseover effect on the 5 main sections below the header. Below that is some great search engine content.

Usability and Functionality

In my website design business, one of the most important thing for almost all of my customers is ease of use. They want their website visitors to be able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. This website has a variety of methods for accomplishing this goal. The first and most obvious are the 5 easy links below the flash header.

As you can see, these links make finding what you’re looking for very easy.  Wood picture frames and metal picture frames are obviously the most commonly used and that’s why they’re featured on the left.  As a design side note, the most important information should always be on the left.  The English language reads from left to right so our eyes naturally start on the left side of the page. I am not even in the market for a picture frame right now, but I couldn’t help visiting the picture frame tips page.  I love “Tips and Tricks” no matter what they’re about.  I would probably read anything for 15 minutes if it was in a list or top 10 format.  Keep that in mind when you’re designing a page to attract a variety of people.  Short and sweet sells.

SEO Suggestions

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your website is if nobody knows about it.  This is partially the case with PictureFrameGuys.com from a search engine standpoint.  I did some research to see where PictureFrameGuys.com ranks for about 150 picture frame related keywords.  Out of those keywords, PictureFrameGuys.com did not have any first page rankings, and only a couple top 30 rankings.  Unfortunately this is totally unacceptable for a business of this caliber.  The number of potential customers being missed is huge!  The worst part about these poor rankings is that, like most businesses, they don’t know how far behind they are.  They’re probably working on getting a few links from Facebook, friends, personal blogs, etc., but in reality that isn’t enough, and never will be enough. After analyzing some of their links, it looks like they might have hired a company to put a few links on some blogs, but that will never be enough (as indicated by the poor rankings). Take a look at the rankings in the picture below (click for full size).

Fortunately this is an easy problem to remedy.  With a customized link building campaign I could have PictureFrameGuys.com (or your website!) in the top 10 for just about every major keyword and hundreds of minor keywords.  The keyword “picture frames” has some very stiff competition, but nothing that couldn’t be beaten with some time and money.

What’s the next step?
After doing a review of the aesthetics, usability, and ranking factors of the PictureFrameGuys.com, I would say they are well on their way to having a profitable business no matter what the economy looks like. As you could guess, the one suggestion I have is to run to your phone and give me a call about search engine marketing, there are thousands (61,280 daily searches according to Market Samurai) of people every day searching for picture frame related keywords that you could be reaching. If you only reached 10% of those, you would have 6,000 new website visitors, convert 10% of those and you would have 600 additional sales per day. Even if you only converted 1%, could you use an extra 60 sales per day?

As I mentioned, I do provide a full range of SEO services including link building. Email me or call me (559-871-1613) anytime to discuss your needs.

By |November 12th, 2010|Reviews|1 Comment
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Creating a Strong Brand with Twitter

Twitter has become one of the most common ways I find people, services and even support. With Twitter, you can create a strong brand, or you can weaken your existing brand.

Let me give you two unnamed examples. Example 1 is a SEO that sells SEO services. I have no doubt that he is great at what he does, but when I view his twitter stream, it’s full of tweets about getting drunk, having random sex and not remembering much of every weekend.

Example 2 is a friend of Example 1, I know this because Example 1 frequently references Example 2 in his drunken tweets talking about where they are going and what they are doing. However, Example 2 never tweets about anything inappropriate.

If you were going to hire someone, aren’t you going to do a little research? For both men, their Twitter account ranks #2 or #3 behind their blogs and company websites. Googling someone’s name is the first thing I do to find out about them. When I find Example 1’s twitter stream am I going to hire him? Definitely not. Even though Example 2 is partying with Example 1, I don’t have any clue because his stream is professional (with occasional personal tweets).

What does your Twitter stream say about you?

By |November 13th, 2009|General|8 Comments
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iMacros Select Random Datasource Line

If you’re like me, you want things to be as random as possible, this means selecting just about everything from a CSV or database. If you want to select a random line from your datasource, just create as many columns you need and use this code.

By |October 31st, 2009|iMacros|1 Comment
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iMacros Random Number Variable

I’ve been using iMacros a lot lately and absolutely love it! Here is a quick and easy snippet of code to set your variable to be a random number between X and Y.

URL GOTO=http://www.graphpad.com/quickcalcs/randomN1.cfm
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:TEXT FORM=NAME:CFForm_1 ATTR=ID:low CONTENT=1
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:TEXT FORM=NAME:CFForm_1 ATTR=ID:hi CONTENT=10
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:SUBMIT FORM=NAME:CFForm_1 ATTR=NAME:Random
TAG POS=18 TYPE=TD ATTR=TXT:* EXTRACT=TXT
'
SET !VAR1 {{!EXTRACT}}
SET !EXTRACT NULL

This bit of code will choose a random number between 1 and 10 (you can change the high and low number on lines 2 and 3), extract that random number then set your random number into an iMacros variable !VAR1. It then erases the !EXTRACT so you’re ready to move onto something else.

You can then use !VAR1 anywhere else you need to use that random number. You can even use it multiple times!

By |October 30th, 2009|iMacros|2 Comments
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