I was recently asked to do a review of a cigar website and I was lucky enough that the people who asked me let me post my opinions here on the site for all of us to see and read. I get asked to review hundreds of websites over the course of a year but most people are not willing to let me post my findings to a public forum so for me, this is a rare treat.

Let me start off by saying that all website designs are a matter of opinion, so regardless of my personal feelings about the colors and quality of the design, there’s a lot of great things about this site that we should go over. After we look at the negatives.

What I don’t like

Web sites that sell cigars should be just that, cigar websites. The should look like cigar websites, smell like cigars, even taste like cigars. This website, doesn’t. I’m personally having a hard time figuring out what this website looks like, especially when I’ve seen their sister website and I know the owners of this site know what cigars taste like. In my opinion, the site looks more (or at least the same) as a car parts website or a discount computer reseller. Perhaps that’s the theme choice but let’s take a quick look at their sister site which also promotes cigars and you’ll see the difference. 

The interface is busy and cluttered but worse of all, you have to dig deep below the fold to even see their product. The fold on a website is the point where a web browser cuts off, everything after it you need to scroll to find. In the case of this website it cuts off half way through the Back to Jamaica promo, well before seeing product.

The website lacks great photography. You know, this always ticks me off. Cigars are sexy, they’re phallic but they’re still sexy. Even in our politically correct world, a fine cigar is one of the great images of wealth and power. To not use a quality photograph on the site seems lazy. The image to my right is courtesy of Andrew Osterberg and took me less than a minute to find on Flickr.

Back in my days at the Hudson’s Bay Company, we had three divisions. The Bay, Zellars and a now defunct discount store. The first was where we sold expensive items for households that liked spending money, Zellars was for average families and the third was for people on a budget. In order to appeal to people on a budget, we used solid orange and black ink in our flyers, cramming content into pages and low quality photos. Our flyers looked cheap so that our prospective customers thought our store was cheap, this site reminds me of that design theory.

What I do like

I absolutely love the footer of this website. All you aspiring web designers out there, take note of this amazing piece of work. Why’s it so amazing? First off, you have to establish what a footer is for. It’s a little like the index of a book, few people even know it’s there until they need it. The footer acts the same way and in this case gives weary website surfers a lifeline at the last minute, helping the prospect find exactly what they’re looking for.

Also, a little known fact about web surfers … if they’re lost, they go to the bottom and oddly, read from the bottom up. Maybe it’s a conditioned habit but with that in mind the first thing they see when they get lost? An email address, fully hyper-linked and ready to go. Sure, this will result in a bit more spam for the people managing the website but it also increases their orders and lowers problems for their customers.

The other thing I love about their footer? Brand piggybacking. Using logos such as BillMeLater and SafeSite, they’re doing a few things:

1. Adding color to a drab site, visually this is very appealing
2. Reassuring their customers that they’re a valid retailer
3. Co-operative advertising works both ways, BillMeLater gets more recognized and in return, this site ‘borrows’ some of the credibility of the other.
4. Clearly identifies shopping options. People fear getting too deep into a shopping cart before being told how to pay. 

Concusion

Overall this website is a basic template theme with little thought given to the customer’s shopping experience. I’d shop here but only if the prices beat other, similar websites.