Would appreciate some feedback

[netsurfr]

What great feedback! Thanks for taking the time to look and provide such useful feedback.

Oolong Tea shows up as one of the entries under Popular Brands. I find this to be ontologically unpleasant.

Wow, how did that happen? Could not agree more! In fact, gone as of now.

Also when I've selected a particular product I'm treated to a list of all categories to which this product belongs, near the top, just beneath the banner links in green. This seems unnecessary. I appreciate a path to the current product, but see, for instance, this Menghai BaDa organic.

3 categories up there!

OK, good point. We'll see if we can't do something about that. That's way more information than the shopper needs to know or cares about.

ok just one more:

First I'll say that your banner is superb: that's really a lovely and crisp photo of a cake edge.

However, your company logo needs some work on the edges/masking, and the Search text is hard to see.

The creator of the logo, Aquanin, had mentioned just those points to me the other day. But it doesn't hurt to hear that someone else noticed these fine points of design.

Thanks again for the great feedback! This is going to be THE tea site designed and refined by the members here at B&B.

 

[netsurfr]

P.p.s. I see you've propogated the mispelling of Sanhetang's Xizihao! Ever since Houde mispelled it as "San Ho Tang" and "Xi Zhi Hao", people (Yunnan Sourcing, for example) have been obliged to mispell it in the same way in order to get the web-hits...

Guang's typically Taiwanese approach to pinyin has had a significant effect on the world of tea!

I appreciate this and am going to try to reflect both the inaccurately propagated name and the more accurate Xizihao name. See the change in the Brand area and I will try to make a point in the actual product descriptions for all of these teas.

Thanks, Hobbes!

 

[thanks]

Sorry if this has been brought up before, but I'm tired as of this writing.

I'd like to see a nice review system in place, which I'm pretty sure you were already planning on. Links to blog posts about certain teas would be nice as well (with permission, of course). If I ever start posting to mine again you have permission to link haha.

I think a pu'er factory focus sampler would be nice. For instance, a handful of cakes from a factory available in a discounted sampler pack. Year packages, raw, ripe, or any other theme you could come up with would be a great idea for sampler packages. Even review rating packages, for instance teas with a rating of four or more stars.

Featured tea of the month page would be awesome showing pictures of brewing the tea, the wet leaves, etc. You could ask a blogger to do the featured tea of the month article and have it be written by different people each month with focuses on different teas.

Actually if you could add pictures of brewing the teas with the wet leaves it would be very helpful. Tea porn will push me to that extra click after adding things to my cart.

I love "Latest news" pages as well, the more frequent the updates, the better. I always want to be up to date on what my vendors are doing or thinking of doing. Of course we'll all know about it, but for those poor saps who have yet to discover B&B, they might need a little more information. Superlather is great at this.

 

[netsurfr]

I have embedded my answers in bold type within the quote to cut down on cutting and pasting.

Sorry if this has been brought up before, but I'm tired as of this writing.

I'd like to see a nice review system in place, which I'm pretty sure you were already planning on. Did you notice the capability once you have a product selected for everyone to write reviews? Did you have a different type of review system in mind? Care to start writing (or copying and pasting) reviews in now?

Links to blog posts about certain teas would be nice as well (with permission, of course). If I ever start posting to mine again you have permission to link haha. Great idea, I need to create a location for that and start contacting blog owners.

I think a pu'er factory focus sampler would be nice. For instance, a handful of cakes from a factory available in a discounted sampler pack. Year packages, raw, ripe, or any other theme you could come up with would be a great idea for sampler packages. Even review rating packages, for instance teas with a rating of four or more stars. Those are some great ideas! Going to have to work that into the site.

Featured tea of the month page would be awesome showing pictures of brewing the tea, the wet leaves, etc. You could ask a blogger to do the featured tea of the month article and have it be written by different people each month with focuses on different teas. I am liking the sound of this a lot! Fantastic idea. I am with you completely on the tea porn. As I recall, you and Salsero have some great tea porn.

Actually if you could add pictures of brewing the teas with the wet leaves it would be very helpful. Tea porn will push me to that extra click after adding things to my cart.

I love "Latest news" pages as well, the more frequent the updates, the better. I always want to be up to date on what my vendors are doing or thinking of doing. Of course we'll all know about it, but for those poor saps who have yet to discover B&B, they might need a little more information. Superlather is great at this.

Thanks for those great observations and ideas.
Keep them coming everyone!

 

[Hobbesoxon]

One quick thought: for US folks, the benefit of your shop is obvious - Yunnan Sourcing stock delivered at superfast times. However, for Europeans, you might want to consider branching out to include products from other sources, because it's likely that your postage will take about as long to reach us as the postage from China (approx. 1 week). Otherwise, there's little to appeal to non-US customers, because YS is marginally cheaper.

Of course, the US customers will probably form the majority of your base, anyway, so it's probably not a big deal.

I remember reading that you were chasing up some leads regarding another supplier of cakes, which is great. Good luck!


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

 

[netsurfr]

Wow, another great idea. Do you have any recommendations for European suppliers that might be interested? It could be a win/win to have them maintain the stock and provide shipping from their location. I would have to really think about how to incorporate that feature into the site in a seamless way but it is a most interesting idea.

As for other sources, I have picked up at least two other competitive sources with a third that specializes in oolongs, particularly TGY that I have yet to utilize.

Cheers,
Steve

One quick thought: for US folks, the benefit of your shop is obvious - Yunnan Sourcing stock delivered at superfast times. However, for Europeans, you might want to consider branching out to include products from other sources, because it's likely that your postage will take about as long to reach us as the postage from China (approx. 1 week). Otherwise, there's little to appeal to non-US customers, because YS is marginally cheaper.

Of course, the US customers will probably form the majority of your base, anyway, so it's probably not a big deal.

I remember reading that you were chasing up some leads regarding another supplier of cakes, which is great. Good luck!


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

 

[pb2q]

Links to blog posts about certain teas would be nice as well (with permission, of course). If I ever start posting to mine again you have permission to link haha.

[...]

Featured tea of the month page would be awesome showing pictures of brewing the tea, the wet leaves, etc. You could ask a blogger to do the featured tea of the month article and have it be written by different people each month with focuses on different teas.

These are really good ideas.

You might be able to automate this: create a custom google search with the good tea/pu-erh blogs. For teas that you carry which show up on the blogs, add a link to the search with that tea as the search term. Depending on your site software, maybe this link could be dynamically generated: only include it when the search returns results...

Actually if you could add pictures of brewing the teas with the wet leaves it would be very helpful. Tea porn will push me to that extra click after adding things to my cart.

Ditto. Seems like Scott typically (often?) has a picture of a gaiwan stuffed with wet leaves.

 

[pb2q]

You might be able to automate this: create a custom google search with the good tea/pu-erh blogs.

ok I spent a little time on an implementation.

Try this page for a search across some prominent puerh blogs.

Here's the list of the blog names (apparently the custom search page doesn't let you view the urls):

• The Half-Dipper
• The Mandarins Tea
• Cha Dao
• MarshalN
• puerh livejournal community
• MattChas blog
• a Felicific life
• Bearsblog
• Tea Journaling
• Phyll's Blog
• Ancient Tea Horse Road
• Hou De Blog
• The Tea Gallery Blog
• Tea Masters
• Tea Obsession

Some are connected to commercial entities, and so may conflict with your own commercial interests. Some of these aren't really active, but they contain lots of good information in old posts.

I'm using Firefox, so I make using this search a little easier by defining a keyword for the search field. To do this:

1. Open the page linked above. You'll see a search terms box with a Search button beside it.
2. Right-click (Context-click, Ctrl-click, ...) in the search terms box, you should get a menu.
3. Select Add a Keyword for this Search.
4. In the resulting dialog, name it anything, but in the Keyword field add a word that you'll use for this search, e.g. puerhsearch.
5. Click Save.
6. Now, in the address bar, you can type something like: puersearch bulang and you'll get a page of results using the custom search engine.

Enjoy.

 

[pb2q]

netsurfr: I'd scale the product images down to a smaller size. These are the images I get in a little preview window when I click See N more pictures.

I'm running a pretty comfortable resolution and most of the pics exceed the size of my browser window. I'd say you could scale them down to half. Making them smaller should also improve load time.

 

[ouch]

• The Half-Dipper
• The Mandarins Tea
• Cha Dao
• MarshalN
• puerh livejournal community
• MattChas blog
• a Felicific life
• Bearsblog
• Tea Journaling
• Phyll's Blog
• Ancient Tea Horse Road
• Hou De Blog
• The Tea Gallery Blog
• Tea Masters
• Tea Obsession

You forgot Ouch's House of Ill Re-pu'-te.


This is becoming a juggernaut.

 

[Sp1key]

seems like a tonne of work for Steve! Hang in there bro

 

[netsurfr]

Wow, more great suggestions since I checked this morning. Many thanks to all. I think I am going to have to create a "to do" list and prioritize it. First on my list is getting all of the products up and available on the site.

You all are great!
Keep the feedback coming.
I just fixed the font sizes on all of the products. I had inconsistent sizes and some that were way too large. Let me know what you think.
This really is becoming the Pu-erh tea lover's site that is built by pu-erh tea lovers. EXCELLENT!

Thank again,
Steve

 

[Hobbesoxon]

Wow, another great idea. Do you have any recommendations for European suppliers that might be interested? It could be a win/win to have them maintain the stock and provide shipping from their location. I would have to really think about how to incorporate that feature into the site in a seamless way but it is a most interesting idea.

Hmm, I'm afraid I've no idea on European distributors - I was really suggesting that you might like to look into stocking some extra products from places other than Yunnan Sourcing, so that your site is of interest to non-Americans.

Maybe you could take a business trip to China/Taiwan and find some sellers!


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

 

[Hobbesoxon]

Just a thought, but have you considered sourcing your cakes from Taobao (Chinese eBay-equivalent)?

E.g., prices for 2008 Xiaguan "FT #6" (a random selection):

Yunnan Sourcing $16.00
Dragon Teahouse $15.99
Taobao $6.15

If you could be the Western reseller of cakes like that, you'd be very popular with customers.


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

 

[ouch]

As new arrivals are posted, the site looks better and better. I did catch a glitch- the 2005 Xiauguan Ancient Wild Tree 357g bing is marked as $550.00


This is great.

 

[netsurfr]

As new arrivals are posted, the site looks better and better. I did catch a glitch- the 2005 Xiauguan Ancient Wild Tree 357g bing is marked as $550.00


This is great.

wow! now if I could just get someone to pay that amount!
thanks for the catch!

 

[netsurfr]

Wow, those are some great prices. Wish I had some skills in reading Chinese.

Cheers,
Steve

Just a thought, but have you considered sourcing your cakes from Taobao (Chinese eBay-equivalent)?

E.g., prices for 2008 Xiaguan "FT #6" (a random selection):

Yunnan Sourcing $16.00
Dragon Teahouse $15.99
Taobao $6.15

If you could be the Western reseller of cakes like that, you'd be very popular with customers.


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

 

[ouch]

Also noticed that your pic for the 2007 Menghai 8592 ripe is actualy the 8582 raw.

http://www.jas-etea.com/products/2007-Menghai-Tea-Factory-"8592-Recipe-Ripe"-Pu%2derh-357-grams.html

 

[netsurfr]

Rats! I hate it when that happens. Thank goodness I have a great quality control team here at B&B.

Appreciate the catch!

Also noticed that your pic for the 2007 Menghai 8592 ripe is actualy the 8582 raw.

http://www.jas-etea.com/products/2007-Menghai-Tea-Factory-"8592-Recipe-Ripe"-Pu%2derh-357-grams.html

 

[Aquanin]

Just FYI for all you tea lovers. Steve's site is now open. www.jas-etea.com I know Steve wants you all to keep the feedback coming.