Stogies Site Lacks Interactivity

Stogies Fine Cigars & Tobaccos
Rogers
www.stogies.com

Our reviewers concluded that www.stogies.com offers customers everything but the most important option a retail business’ Web site should — a way to buy stuff.

What’s the point of being on the Web if you’re not giving customers another place to click and stick money in your cash register? Stogies, which is based in Rogers and has a location on the downtown Fayetteville square, apparently realized that very thing.

The company recently hired NWA Business Online in Rogers to develop www.virtualhumidor.com, a secured e-tail site that lets customers purchase anything from Stogies’ Davidoff red mahogany humidors ($800) to a 25-count box of Dunhill Cabreras cigars ($202).

The e-tail site will eventually be reachable from a link at Stogies’ information site. But for the purposes of this review, www.stogies.com was considered on its own strictly an information site.

Our reviewers liked the static menu’s mouse-over features, which include a menu bar of cigars that appear to burn when a section is clicked and smoke-wafting pipes. The site’s info pages offer comprehensive descriptions of Stogies’ lighters, pipes, special tobacco blends and a fine line of cigars. The only thing that’s missing from a few items is the price tag, but, of course, if you have to ask the price…

One reviewer found it relatively easy to find the site using a couple of popular search engines. Overall, the reviewers liked Stogies’ graphics and design. The inset picture of the company’s fully stocked humidor on the home page draws surfers deeper into the site.

Another reviewer said she really liked the site’s geographical map feature, which gives directions to both Stogies locations. We tried to load it several times via a DSL line, however, and could never get the maps to materialize.

The only other drawback came when we tried to contact Stogies via its “contact us” e-mail link. We sent a request for more information about the company and after a week were still waiting for a response. If we had been asking to buy a box of Butera cigars, that would have been a missed sale.

If the site was interactive, we’re sure it would get a higher rating.

In the meantime, the good news for the company is that our reviewers believe the e-tail site will be a huge success. NWA Business, doing e-commerce design nationally as Pixel Vendors, was sharp enough to help Stogies secure the rights to its revenue site’s Web address. There are numerous virtual humidors from all over the world on the Internet, but there’s only one www.virtualhumidor.com.

And with more than 900 items in its online catalog, we’re sure customers will be fired up about Stogies.