It ok for Tazo to have a crappy landing page because they have excellent placement at point of purchase (aka. physical landing page). They have placement and packaging that converts, and built in defaults that result in sales. (eg. if you order tea you're ordering Tazo at a large number of coffee shops)
They also have excellent testimonials by having a large chain such as Starbucks serve their teas. Tea is generally an instant gratification purchase, and not something you'd wait 2 days to arrive over the internet. (Yes, perhaps there is an opportunity for a Zappos of tea, but internet retailing is not a core competency of Tazo)
If you're ordering tea from the internet, it's probably specialty and not something you can pick up from one of the hundreds of coffee shops you can find within a few miles of where ever you live. Hence if you are 'really really obscure hipster tea' then you need a good landing page, Tazo does not.
In the world of people who buy tea Tazo has the #1 ranking in terms of 'google for tea' (aka. starbucks). Designing a proper landing page and website will add almost nothing to their bottom line where as changing their packaging would have a much bigger impact, or sweetening the deal for distributors so the local mom and pop coffee shop is more likely to carry Tazo. People often forget that 98% of purchases are made offline. No one is going to order Tazo tea from the internet, nor will they decide to order Tazo tea the next time they are at the coffee shop because of a landing page. Therefore from the perspective of their bottom line their landing page is as good as it needs to be.
I have FireFox/NoScript, and with that it's even worse: After a few seconds of a screen with a tiny "broken plugin" window, it does a redirect to a "noflash" page. The only link on that page is to the Adobe Flash download.
The redirect is one where the back button doesn't work; to me that's one of the most incompetent web design flaws: Send people away from your main page and then not give them a way to get back. It's bad enough they demand you have Flash (do all iPhone/iPad users drink coffee?)
I've seen similar "Please enable JavaScript in your browser" pages without a path back to the main page as well. Idiocy.
"You are out of your mind. Their site flat out does not work with the default behavior of most modern browsers"
I think you are missing the fleitz's point. From his post:
"It ok for Tazo to have a crappy landing page"
They are omnipresent in meatspace. I'd say they overspent on the website. They could have gone with a one-pager that said something like "We're Tazo Tea. You can find us everywhere. Go buy some."
He wasn't saying that is OK their site is non-functioning but that they really don't even need a website.
You had me at the first sentence. I thought there was something genuinely broken about that site. If that is the expected behavior, and it's far from good, someone ought to get reprimanded for that job.
But how much would it cost Tazo to upgrade their landing page to be merely mediocre-but-usable? I would think that for a company of Tazo's size and success, the cost of doing this would be trivial.
Sure, if Tazo were a 3 man startup with no bureaucracy or communication overhead, and with a high incentive to change their page. Never underestimate how much effort and time it takes for bigger companies to make seemingly minute changes.
The more players involved with a product, the harder it is to make radical changes.
Who knows? But it doesn't seem like the company is too big and bureaucratic to fix this if they wanted to, unless there's too much impedence working through Starbucks.
While the monetary cost is trivial, the amount of effort to turn around management is huge. This happens in a lot of corporations, where the best known subsidiary may have a radically different methodology. In this case, it’s Tazo’s approach to the web.
Remember, Tazo is owned by Starbucks, which designs HTML5-featured sites around the iPad. They’re no stranger to a forward-thinking web presence.
I'm wondering why they have a landing page at all, rather than simply directing viewers to the site that opens when you click the link on the landing page.
Regardless of whether it affects their revenues and sales, they went to the effort of building a website, and then made it nigh impossible to get to.
At the very least, they're wasting a large portion of their investment in building a website.
Imagine if a tech startup created a physical bi-fold brochure, but then glued it shut. It doesn't matter a whole lot because it isn't mission critical for a tech startup, but it sure is a stupid thing to do.
Because Tazo is not an internet startup therefore their website is irrelevant to sales which is what matters. Tazo isn't trying to raise VC from power points, their trying to sell tea, and from the looks of things have done a pretty good job of it.
Anything worth doing (and websites, in case you did not notice the last 15 years of history, are definitely worth doing) is worth doing properly. Tazo is definitely not doing this properly. The site is actively annoying and well-nigh unto impossible to navigate.
Where do you get this crazy attitude that the web is not relevant to sales? Have you been locked in a Wal-Mart with no access to the Internet since 1990?
Yes, I've been locked in a Wal-Mart in Arkansas since 1990 with no internet. I didn't get the idea that the web is irrelevant to sales, I got the idea that the web is irrelevant to the sales of Tazo tea. I got this idea because I see people buy Tazo tea almost everyday, have not looked at their website until today, and then it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to get it to work. This tells me that their website is irrelevant to their sales.
If this is so why don't you create an awesome landing page that converts really well for tazo tea, get some SEO going, open up an account at shopify and then sell tazo tea on the internet? Perhaps you're not doing this because it would not generate the sales worth having the site? Prove me wrong, be a millionaire by selling tea on the internet because it converts so well.
I certainly grant your point (although it's obvious) that the web is not relevant to Tazo's current sales. Because they're not using it...at least not effectively.
The far more useful question, and the one I thought was in play, was: is the web relevant to the possible sales they could glean if they used the net effectively?
As for why I don't do it myself? Dammit, Jim, I'm an opera singer, not a tea entrepreneur!
A company's web site is a reflection of their brand (start up or not). This is a poor reflection. Being a food product / brick and mortar entity does not get you off the hook.
From a philosophical perspective this is true, but even if this website is a poor reflection on Tazo, this has a minimal impact on Tazo's revenues and profits.
Tazo isn't an island unto itself. Major brand websites affect the style of the entire internet (see Google and Twitter for two recent examples) and so it's right to say this is an example of a crappy 1998 "landing page."
I suspect the change would bring in enough profit over the course of a year to justify the 10 minutes it would take a bad web developer to put in a redirect from the landing page to the main site.
All I get on my iPhone is a nice prompt to install flash, and no link to a non-flash version so I can't even comment on the horrible-ness of the landing page.
Ain't much better on the desktop - there's a broken javascript link to the front page. I had to look at it and type in the actual URL: http://www.tazo.com/tazo.asp?init=
ETA: Mind, this looks like a neglected old-school ASP site that hasn't been touched in years.
That's the point the OP is trying to make. Btw, on a browser with Flash, you get a popup with flash content instead of actual content on the main page. And the back button breaks (at least to me in Safari in OSX 10.6.5.)
>"It obviously plays zero role in their sales and marketing strategy. By the looks of things they're focusing on their facebook page rather than their website as their main online presence."
Does any of their packaging include the website address. Does Facebook link to the website? If either of these is true then they are using it as part of their marketing strategy. I don't expect much from a tea company, just an image with their product range and possibly a list of suppliers along with the usual boiler-plate and statutory obligations.
Are they a public company, trying to win investment?
I didn't notice their landing page linking to a Facebook page which at least says that they didn't tell the person in charge of the website that Facebook is their main online contact point.
I know people who would think that is good ... (Based on the fact that they think flash pages with intro animations are good, because they 'clearly take more work, and are so much more unique.').
It just says my patience will be rewarded with tea... I'm on an iPhone. I'm going to have to be patient for a very long time to get this tea. And I'm thirsty now.
As an amusing bit of background, the Tazo site was designed by Sandstrom, who have done some other doozies in their time: http://www.sandstrompartners.com/work/tazo
It's even more poignant that Tazo hasn't changed much at all in the last four years...
Yeah, this website is bad. But I agree with the comments that say it doesn't matter, because it doesn't. You are not Tazo's customer; Starbucks and other coffee shops are. Presumably nobody googles for tea and finds Tazo, instead they see it at other coffee shops, see it at trade shows, etc.
It Just Doesn't Matter. (Why have a website at all? No idea. They wanted one, did a bad job, didn't see it affect their sales, and just left it. Or something.)
Bzzt. I am Tazo's customer. I buy their products. If they had a great website, such that I could learn more about their products which I haven't tried yet, I might just buy more of their products.
Stop doing that. It's obnoxious and makes you come across as a smug asshole. HN guidelines say, "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation."
They also have excellent testimonials by having a large chain such as Starbucks serve their teas. Tea is generally an instant gratification purchase, and not something you'd wait 2 days to arrive over the internet. (Yes, perhaps there is an opportunity for a Zappos of tea, but internet retailing is not a core competency of Tazo)
If you're ordering tea from the internet, it's probably specialty and not something you can pick up from one of the hundreds of coffee shops you can find within a few miles of where ever you live. Hence if you are 'really really obscure hipster tea' then you need a good landing page, Tazo does not.
In the world of people who buy tea Tazo has the #1 ranking in terms of 'google for tea' (aka. starbucks). Designing a proper landing page and website will add almost nothing to their bottom line where as changing their packaging would have a much bigger impact, or sweetening the deal for distributors so the local mom and pop coffee shop is more likely to carry Tazo. People often forget that 98% of purchases are made offline. No one is going to order Tazo tea from the internet, nor will they decide to order Tazo tea the next time they are at the coffee shop because of a landing page. Therefore from the perspective of their bottom line their landing page is as good as it needs to be.
Also it appears that their 'landing page' is: http://www.facebook.com/tazo?v=info and not tazo.com