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Manufacturer Website Reviews Wrap Up
By Jesse | May 31, 2008 |
Well it has been fun, but I’m starting to kind of burn out on doing website reviews. I think by now if I haven’t driven my point home I never will. With this round up I thought I’d highlight a few of the things I’m looking for in a site.
Show us the cigars
The whole point in having a website is to show and tell us about your cigars. It is amazing how many manufacturers are epic failures when it comes to this point. When I’m buying new cigars I typically like to make an informed decision and not shell out too much on a whim. I’ve also learned that sometimes the sales staff at your local B&M isn’t the most knowledgeable.
What a good manufacturer site should have:
- Pictures of all brands, and preferably sizes.
- Breakdown the blend and tell us what is in the cigar.
- List the flavor/strength profile of the cigar.
- Tell us about the cigar, its history and what makes it unique.
- Tell us what others thought, link to reviews on the web or at least how they fared in Cigar Insider or Cigar Aficionado.
- Also when you release a new cigar get it on the site in a timely fashion. I’ve seen sites that haven’t added cigars they released over two years ago.
- El Rey de Los Habanos has one of the best cigar sections.
Who the hell are you?
Tell us a little about your company and who you are. For the most part they do a good job on the history, but come up lacking on recent events. It is obvious if you’ve taken a look at many of these sites on why they don’t publish much news or recent information, the site layout doesn’t really allow for it.
Many of these manufacturers could really benefit from adding a weblog package to their site. It makes it easy to post updates when you publish a press release or want to link to somewhere your cigars were featured.
Please give me an option to get in touch with you. I’m amazed at how many sites have almost no contact information. I’ve also started to get a disdain for contact forms. You have no idea how many times I request information through these repeatedly and was promptly ignored.
Camacho has it down, not only do they announce events, but they show us bloggers some love when we talk about their cigars.
Have you tried using your own site?
I honestly wonder if some of these manufacturers ever try and actually use their own website. Do they enjoy the clunky menus and the music every time they visit the site? Please, for the sake of my sanity STOP! I won’t name names but one manufacturer in particular the music starts playing again every time you switch pages. I ran in horror before I could even review the site.
Alright you’ve got a site with a decent layout, but what else should you have? First off you should tell us where we can buy your cigars. I think a blog or press room area can fill a gap I find lacking on many sites. But keep in mind any extra features you add will be useless if they are not kept up to date.
I think CAO and Camacho both do great jobs with having extra features on their website and using them. CAO puts out a newsletter on a regular basis and Camacho uses their blog heavily.
Well that wraps it up. While I’m not a web design expert, I do know the basics of what goes into a good website. I hope a few people in the industry listened and maybe in the future we’ll see some better sites out there.
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Tags: Camacho Cigars, CAO Cigars, Don Pepin Garcia, El Rey de los Habanos, Website Reviews
Topics: Website Reviews |
May 31st, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Great recap of this feature Jesse. I thought all of your observations and suggestions were insightful and constructive. I enjoyed following this series on your blog. I share your hope that maybe some of these companies can learn to make a decent website. I know my favorite cigar Marca has one of the worst sites on the web and I’d like to see it improved upon.
Good Job!
-Matt
Matt’s Cigar Journal