Best Practices for Tea Company Websites

I have been working on a series of posts on best practices for tea company websites. Although the focus is on tea companies and online retailers of tea, specifically, ones with their own brand of tea, and the examples are taken from companies with their own brands of tea, much of the advice contained here is relatively broad, and is likely to be useful to a broad range of online retailers, and perhaps even webmasters in areas other than retail.

The list:

• The Importance of Having A Product Page For Each Tea - This post explains the value of having an individual page on your website for each tea in your catalog.
• Flash-Only Websites and Insulting Your Customers: Shooting Yourself In The Foot - In this post I explain the numerous ways in which having a flash-only website can harm your business. I also give my advice for what I think the best use of flash (Adobe flash) is for websites.
• Link Permanence - The Importance Of Keeping The Same URL Scheme - This post emphasizes the value and importance of maintaining a consistent URL scheme and using redirects to prevent broken links, and explores exactly how much is lost when links to your site become broken links.
• Tea Company Websites And Online Tea Stores: Consistent Navigation Schemes, When To Have Separate Websites - This post emphasizes the benefits of having a single online store that is the same as your business's primary website, and having a consistent navigation scheme across the whole site.
• How To Link To Other Websites From Your Tea Website - And How Not To - This post explains how to effectively use outbound links to make your website more useful and authoritative, and also talks about link exchanges and other pitfalls involving link schemes that can harm your site and are best avoided.
• Photographing Tea For Your Website - My recommendations for photographing tea for a tea company website, covering a bit about composition when photographing loose-leaf tea, as well as what types of photos are most important for different types of tea companies to show on their websites.
• Listing A Phone Number And Address On Your Tea Company Website Or Online Tea Store - This post discusses when to list (and when not to list) a phone number and mailing addresss, discusses the benefits of listing both, and gives a bit of advice about how to include phone numbers in a webpage in a way that will be most useful for your customers.
• Website Speed And Responsiveness - Why Speed Is Important For Tea Companies - This post explains why website speed and responsiveness is important for companies that sell tea online, and also gives some specific advice about how to achieve a fast website.
• The Welcome Page For A Tea Company Website - Don't Have It - In this post, I explain why I don't like "welcome pages" or "entry pages", and why I think it is better to have your homepage immediately land visitors on the fully-functional main part of your website.
• Informational Tea Articles On A Commercial Tea Website - This article explores the question of whether, when, and how to write and host informational articles about tea on a website primarily oriented to selling tea. I share my experience with running RateTea, a website rich in informational articles, and I also give my perspective on how these articles can both improve and damage your reputation as a tea company, depending on how accurate they are and what they communicate.
• How To Link Your Tea Company Website to RateTea And Other Sites - This post discusses the benefits of linking to interactive tea review websites like RateTea and Steepster, as well as group tea review blogs like TeaViews and Tea Review Blog, and reviews on individual tea blogs. The post discusses the relative merits of the different ways of linking to these sites, including using social networking icons, text links on your product pages, and writing about these sites in your company's blog or newsletter.

You may also find this old post useful. It was not originally included as part of the series, but it is directly relevant, and on the same topic:

• Tea Company Websites Conveying Instant Legitimacy (or lack thereof) Through the "About Us" Page - This post emphasizes the importance of having an "About" page, and gives some pointers on how to use this page to give your company instant legitimacy in the eyes of the people viewing your site.

I will update this page as the series continues. I have been posting these articles every Friday, although I'm not sure if this trend will continue indefinitely; this series may eventually become irregular.