This has to be by far one of the most painful of these reviews to do yet. As you can tell by the reviews written by Jeff here on the site, Padilla makes some damn fine cigars. Unfortunately don’t expect to use their website to find out any information about them.
Cigar Information: D-
I’m giving them a passing grade, because they at least have some of their cigars on the site, but three of the four we’ve reviewed recently are not listed. The information regarding the cigars is kind of sparse. The only reason I didn’t give them an F, is that they at least break down the tobacco in the cigars, along with photos of all the sizes. For some reason my mind is thinking “legs”, not cigars.
Company Information: C
The Company and Family History is excellent, but like the cigars it is out of date. They make no mention of the fact that they’ve been working on new blends with Pepin Garcia. They do get credit for having good contact information on the site, although I’ve sent them an email or two and have yet to get a response.
Website Features and Usability: C
I hate the splash page the makes me click enter to see the information that I came to see. I do like the Store Locator, but I know it is out of date as one of the stores locally that is listed no longer carries Padilla Cigars. The have a Press Coverage section, but the last update is December 2005. I highly doubt with as much buzz as they are creating about their cigars that they haven’t been mentioned since then. I’m also wondering how often they send out newsletters, I believe I signed up several months ago, but have yet to see one.
Recommendations:
Cut back on the use of flash and get rid of the welcome page. The welcome page doesn’t tell me anything they couldn’t add on the main page. Above all else they need to update this site. The site is absolutely worthless to me when it lacks information and contains out of date information. The only thing that keeps me coming back to the site is the model.
Popularity: 6% [?]
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I wonder if they thought the pictures of attractive women holding cigars would make up for an otherwise mediocre website experience.
I mean, yeah, I like pictures of beautiful women as much as the next guy. And I like pictures of beautiful women with cigars. But, well, there are sites dedicated to those kinds of things, and that’s not why I’m visiting a cigar makers website.
Good review, Jesse.
When the site was made it was a good site, the problem is they haven’t updated it in ages.
Yeah, I kind of figured it was good when it was up-to-date. Too bad they haven’t kept it up-to-date.