Gran Habano was founded by Guillermo Rico and his son, George Rico. This cigar manufacturer is starting to make a pretty good name for themselves so I decided to take a look at their site. It was a bit difficult to find the right address at first, but after some snooping I located it.
Cigar Information: A-
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first stumbled across the site, but I was pleasantly surprised by the cigar section. While they are missing the Gran Habano VL, the other cigars are very well documented. They have plenty of pictures, good descriptions and a great breakdown of the cigars. If the GranHabano VL was listed they would have scored perfectly in the cigar information category.
Company Information: C+
They have a short about section that gives a good overview of the company history. The contact information is very detailed, so no complaints in that area. What hurt them the most is the lack of company news and press information. Smokers really want to know what others think of the cigars before they go out and buy. Links to magazines or websites that have covered the cigars could help part me with my hard earned cash.
Website Features and Usability: B-
Yet another site that falls victim to the heavy use of Flash. I found the navigation to be a bit clunky with the scrolling menu items, but the links along the bottom of the page do compensate for that somewhat. The retailerlocater appears to be up to date, but I had some trouble getting it to return any shops in my area. I had to leave the Zip Code field blank to get any results to show up. An Event Calendar is a must addition for the site.
Recommendations:
The site is a fairly straight forward site that has easy to find information. They need to add the Gran Habano VL to the list of cigars to round out that section. Adding a News/Press section along with an Events Calendar would really make the site more useful tool.
Popularity: 12% [?]
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Man, that means there are three different URL’s and two different websites for Gran Habano: http://www.stccigars.net/ and http://ghcigars.com/index.php which appear to go to the same place, and http://www.granhabano.net/ which goes to a broken, default template website. Talk about confusing. I’d dock them for that too. (I guess it’s possible they don’t know about that other website…)
I think the website (speaking of the one you reviewed) is actually better than some. While it does have flash, it’s not quite as annoying as some others. (And thank god, no soundtrack to turn off!)
Good stuff man, keep up the good work!
After doing a bit of WHOIS lookups I came to the conclusion that granhabano.com/net were not their sites. It appears that stccigars.net and ghcigars.com go to the same site so I decided to leave it alone for now.
Good call, then. No need to hammer Gran Habano for the work of a well intentioned, but misguided fan. (Or somebody trying to sell them a website!)
It’s strange that ghcigars.com seems like the most appropriate URL, but it never shows in search engines that I’ve seen.
I don’t think the guy was well intentioned. My feeling is that someone is using it to harvest information. The only feature on the site is a Store Locater/Contact Form. I’d be cautious of entering my email address on it.