Cigar Family is the website for Fuente and Newman Families of Cigars. Recently they did a complete redesign of the site and I was hoping they’d correct many of the issues I had with the site. They corrected some and created a few more.
Cigars: C
If they had done all the cigars like they did the Newman Family Cigars they would have aced my expectations for what information a company needs to have on their cigars. Unfortunately the cigars listed under the Fuente Family side have a great cigar history, but they give no details on any of the tobacco in the cigars. They get credit for the in depth histories and having photos of all their cigars. They are missing some of the special edition cigars along with information on the Anejos. The one that really kills me is the section for Cigar Family Cigars, it is useless and if you run your mouse over it really fast it sounds like my three year old playing Chopsticks on a cheap electric keyboard. I’d like to note that my three year old has no concept of how to even play Chopsticks.
Company Information: A+
This is by far one of the best sites I’ve seen in this area. The history of the families is very detailed, a good thing for a company that probably did more than anyone to revitalize the cigar industry. They have good press information and appears they may be planning to branch out into New Media more with some podcasts. At this time no podcasts were listed but since they just recently redesigned the site I’m going to wait and see what they do. Contacts are well documented with an address, email addresses and telephone numbers. Other Cigar Manufacturers need to take notes here, this is the kind of information you should have on your company.
Website Usability and Features: C-
Flash, Flash and yet more Flash! The site is slow loading because of the heavy use of Flash, not to mention the fact that you cannotre-size or copy text. Add to the fact I learned the hard way that have some really annoying music you cannot turn off until the site is fully loaded. Nothing like being on a conference call with your boss and suddenly a trumpet solo belts out of your computer’s speakers. Because of the Flash, you’re screwed on lower screen resolutions and the site makes poor use of screen real estate on larger resolutions. The navigation is frustrating, if you move your mouse wrong while navigating the drop downs you lose them. Other links for some unknown reason decide to take you back to the main page when you click from one area to another, for example if you go from the FAQ to the Cigars the page reloads. They do have one of the most active cigar forums of any manufacturer, even more popular than someindependent cigar communities.
Recommendations:
I really wish cigar manufacturers would move away from this love affair with all Flash websites. The information on the Fuente Family Cigars needs more detail, I’d also like to see information on the special edition cigars. The drop down menus would be better if they dropped down vertically instead of horizontally. The site loads slow even on faster connections and requires me to click enter to get past the loading page, at least have the main page load when ready. Please kill the music, I don’t see how this really adds any benefit at all to the site.
Popularity: 10% [?]
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Yeah, I remember we were talking about that noise over Skype, trying to figure out what the heck that was. I kept thinking I had some window open somewhere with a really bad embedded soundtrack! LOL, that’s just awesome. Bad awesome.
Amen on the flash! Flash is sooo, what, 2005? I really hate that hover over stuff that goes away if move your mouse. At the very least these sites ought to offer a text base, bells-and-whistles free version of their website. Seriously, what does flash really give you that you can’t accomplish with Ajax and DHTML? Does anybody like a website that loads with a soundtrack? And it makes it a pain to quote these sites, because you can’t copy the text!
I think they intentionally keep the blends secret on some of their higher end cigars. I can understand that (kinda adds to the mystique), but they really outta give the stats on the more regularly available cigars.
I don’t see how telling me your binder is Dominican and your wrapper is Cameroon really gives away the secret recipe. How many different regions in those two countries is tobacco grown?
I’m with you about Flash, Jesse. I don’t know why ANYONE still uses it. But, I find that cigar and liquor websites are especially obsessed with it.
It’s bad for users/usability, it’s bad for SEO, and it’s often implemented in ways that are just plain annoying (like auto-loading music, although that’s not exclusive to Flash-based sites).
If a web designer insists on using Flash, fine, but there should still be a non-Flash, plain-HTML version of the site offered.
After reading the article, I can see where they went wrong. I don’t feel flash is that horrible but there are annoyances to it.
I personally feel the music is very soothing, although I can see how it can interrupt a phone call fairly easy. Just keep your volume down a little bit.
{ 1 trackback }