jay_man said

Some feedback on a new company?

Hello All,

I have recently launched my own online loose leaf tea store company. Yes I know the market is saturated and all. However I am a lover of tea and wanted to sell the tea’s I love and start sharing my tea knowledge through my own site. So I took the dive.

However I am wondering if any tea lovers from this community would be able to take a look at my site and provide some honest feedback on the site which is www.ClassicTeaCompany.com . I am looking for insight on:
– when visiting the site do you feel the site is professional
and secure enough to buy from?

- Do you feel the site is easy to navigate/easy to find what you are looking for? - Do you feel the pricing is on par with other sites selling similar blends? - Do you feel the teas being sold are too mainstream/too common/not unique enough to want to try? I hope this is not seen as spam as I am looking for honest reviews of the site and could think of no other community online that would have a user-base of people who could give such a review.

For those interested as a thank you if you wanted to also buy something at 30% off you could use the coupon code: SAVE30

Thank you for your time

11 Replies

I should start by saying I’m not your customer base. I see literally nothing in your shop that tempts me, because I’m not interested in tea with non-tea flavorings or ingredients.

I’d suggest listing your weights in grams, in addition to (or instead of) oz. When I’m looking at tea, if it’s something that I might be interested in, my 1st question is “how much $/g.” I can do the conversions, and even know that 1.76oz is 50g, but it would reduce my cognitive burden if you just said ‘50g’ and not ‘1.76 oz.’ Tea is commonly sold by the gram even in the US these days.

More detail is better. Origin information is always interesting, even about the base of blends. I will not buy green tea that doesn’t come with a representation about when it was harvested. The best tea description you have is for the puer, though you should remove the howler about it winning both the raw and ripe tea gold medals. Discerning puer buyers will not purchase tea without a production date, generally the older the better.

The ease of navigation is no worse than the typical vendor’s site. Your base price of $0.18/g seems a little steep, comparing you to Adagio (which seems fair), though it’s on a par with what you’d spend on 50g of tea bought at *$.

To attract me, you’d need to stock straight unblended unflavored teas that are somehow more out-of-the-ordinary than the rather commodity-looking offerings you now have. Also, I would suggest you add a mug infuser to your teaware lineup.

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jay_man said

aardvarkcheeselog, I thank you for taking the time to review my website and provide feedback. I really appreciate your comments and suggestions.

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Arby said

I would probably not place on order because I do not see any blends that I would think “I must try that from this particular seller.” Most of the flavours seem common to me, and I would like to see more unique names and flavours. I also would like to see more pu’erhs. All your teas should list the harvest date, area, and hopefully the estates you bought them from. I would also want to know where the flavours were mixed. I mostly buy rooibos (not fruity herbals) or decaf black tea, so I would be interested in interesting flavours of those.

I second the recommendation about grams, I use grams exclusively and it is a pain to convert.

The sale ad on your scrolling banner looks unprofessional to me. It looks like a stock photo instead of an image you took and edited specifically or this add. Otherwise, I think the site looks quite good. I can see a lot of potential and will consider buying in the future.

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AllanK said

Your peppermint is very over priced.

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jay_man said

Thank you Arby for your comments. Also Allan thank you I have actually just adjusted the price for our organic peppermint tea a good amount of people have ordered it at the original price without any negative comments, a few have even given some positive feedback on the quality. :)

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AllanK said

As to your matcha there is not enough information about it for me to purchase it. Where was it grown? Is it ceremonial grade? etc, etc, etc

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Mookit said

Well, your website took 3 minutes to load for me. I suppose you should start there. If I wasn’t willing to wait to give you feedback, I would have closed the window and never looked back after the first 30 seconds.

shezza said

oh huh, i thought it was just me because i was trying to open it on my ipad, but i just tried on my desktop and it didn’t take more than 30 seconds, but there was still a very noticeable delay and that is still A Problem. You really have to watch your page weight, because it doesn’t matter what your website looks like if nobody sticks around to see it.

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jay_man said

Thank you for the feedback on my page speed. I will look into my page weight to get it to load faster.

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As a Canadian tea shopper and drinker, I want to know whether you ship beyond the United States. If so, I’d like information on shipping in FAQ. If not, then that should be clearly noted as well. If there is information on shipping on your page, then it is far too much work to find it.

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hawkband1 said

Proof read both your FAQ and tea descriptions. I see incorrect word choices, words run together, and misspellings. It doesn’t flow well.
Shipping should be in the FAQ, especially for information on shipping to other countries, if available. Payment options – paypal, credit cards – which ones.

If all your teas come packaged in a tin, I would put that in a more prominent place. Also, it would be nice to have the option to purchase tea without the tin.

More descriptions of tea taste and aroma, harvest date. Brewing recommendations for each tea on the website (amount of tea to use – g and tsp, time for infusion, water temp – F and C).

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