Beginning with Episode 94 of the Stogie Fresh 5 cigarcast, Jesse Nachtigal from CigarJack.net began a new regular segment where he reviews and rates cigar manufacturers websites. This is a long overdue focus on the source of consumer information about cigars: the manufacturers. If we can’t get the straight scoop from the manufacturers, then who CAN we get it from?

I think many cigar manufacturers are getting the opinion that they can create more interest in their cigars by what they don’t tell us. What does it really mean when a cigar manufacturer tells us this blend is a “secret” or that they will not reveal the identity of a particular wrapper leaf? It doesn’t mean anything!  As far as I am concerned, no information = PURE HYPE.

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We often think that too much information can be pure hype, but I’m here to say that too little information can also be pure hype. I’d rather take my chances with too much information, rather than too little. I can decide for myself what’s hype and what’s not, AFTER I see the goods!

I can’t tell you how much trouble I’ve had in recent weeks in finding enough information to put together even a 2-minute introduction of the cigars that I am featuring on the Stogie Fresh 5 podcast. And the manufacturers have often been less than forthcoming with any useable information. I for one am tired of this posturing by cigar manufacturers. SO, with that in mind, we come back to these reviews and ratings of the cigar manufacturers sites by our friend Jesse Nachtigal of CigarJack.net  Jesse is giving the grades to these sites and I’m very tempted to start listing the very worst sites on a Cigar Web site Hall of Shame.

For those of you who need a refresher, the audio segments done for Stogie Fresh can be found on our Cigar Media Center. Also you can visit each of the manufacturer’s websites by following the links below:

          Rocky Patel Site                       CAO Site                                Padilla Site

DOC’S NOTES ON THE WEBSITES:

I don’t want to rehash everything that Jesse has already told you, but I do have some pet peeves and perhaps some different perspectives that I would like to share.

ROCKY PATEL: As of this writing, the Rocky Patel home page still has a video and “Urgent News” about a proposed legislative tax increase on cigars. Rocky stresses that it is urgent that you contact one of the members of the Ways and Means Committee “no later than noon, Thursday, July 26.” Well, here we are 5 months later. You get the idea... I am a believer that you have to keep a web site current. It is simply cheesy and unprofessional to allow a web site to lapse with respect to information. Do everybody a favor, and axe your website if you can’t keep it current. Enough said.

The “About Us” page has too many PDF articles. I don’t mind downloading a PDF if it is really necessary, like a formatted newsletter or a scanned page layout, but it just seems lazy to use PDF for a text-based article.

The Rocky Patel Blog has to go. It is horrible. It simply doesn’t fit the image of Rocky Patel or his site.

The “Factory Tour” page has some nice photos, but it would be really useful if the photos were captioned, so people would know what they are looking at. Also, the “larger” photos take quite a long time to load for their size... there must be some coding overhead here.

I also want to complain about contact information on a site. This not only applies to Rocky Patel’s site, but to many of the cigar manufacturer sites. They give you contact information, but it’s like rolling a roulette wheel to see if you are going to pick the right day, time, and planet to be graced with a reply. Don’t put contact information, if you don’t plan on responding.

CAO: This site is slick, I have to give it that much. The Flash is well done, but I do feel like I’m stuck in a software dream and can’t find the abort button. Of course, the downside of creating a Flash application is that you end up not knowing what to do with your “ancillary” information that doesn’t fit the application nomenclature. The CAO solution was to end up using a lot of pop-up windows. Of course, M.E.R.C.H. takes you to a whole new site.

CAO’s implementation of their farm and factory tour was much better than Rocky Patel’s. The app loaded quickly and there was good, concise and educational captioning.

In all, there is a lot in the CAO web site. Getting to all of it can be a laborious process. Wading through the thumbnails in the photo section of “Multimedia” gave me a headache in less than three minutes. Seeing all the pop-up windows made me think of turning off pop-ups in my browser settings... and I never do that. In fact, I tried to see how many pop-up windows I could get to open at one time. Unfortunately, the bane of Javascript simply replaces the information in the same window. However, if you don’t close the pop-up window each time you use it, the new information will be hidden in a layer (or tab) behind the main window.

PADILLA: First off, I agree with Jesse, the splash page has to go. If a splash page is really good, I will really enjoy it... ONCE, maybe twice, but after that it’s a nuisance. Don’t tell me to bookmark the page, either. That doesn’t help when you’re on someone else’s computer or wanting to tell people how to get there from memory.

Although I dislike the effect of having the screen redraw itself each time you click on a new section or subsection, it does load fairly quickly. I don’t think that the dimensions of the Flash application make efficient use of the overall screen real estate that most people have nowadays. I checked the site on three computers with three different screen resolutions and three different browsers. So, I can say confidently that the dimensions of the app should be taller and would then have more space with which to provide us more information.

The History section is interesting and educational. However, the text is pretty small on most higher resolution monitors. In fact, even on the standard 1024 x 768 resolution, it was pretty small for my tired old eyes. Also, I have noted that the “Padilla & Cuba” section has been “Coming Soon” for a real long time...

The “Press Coverage” section seems worthless, unless you want to look at old magazine covers.

Overall, the most important section of any website for me, is the information it gives me about the cigars. The Padilla site gives only the bare minimum. Name, rank and serial number... And, as Jesse pointed out, there is nothing about their newest cigars.

I like Ernesto Padilla. I think he is really working hard to produce great cigars and he’s having some major success at it. But my message for Ernesto and all the other cigar manufacturers is that the cigar industry is changing rapidly. The consumers are going to wake up and realize how much control they really have over the industry. The sleeping giant will awake, and he’s gonna be damn hungry.

Thanks once again to Jesse Nachtigal for his great analyses of the cigar manufacturers websites and stay tuned for more reviews/ratings in the weeks ahead.