Tea Company Websites And Online Tea Stores: Consistent Navigation Schemes, When To Have Separate Websites

Notice that this is a completely different header...the footer on the page, incidentally, is also completely different. This confuses viewers of the website, and also slows them down. People used to exploring the store section of the site may return to the site by typing in the URL, rishi-tea.com, only to find an unfamiliar header. Similarly, someone who wanted to click one of the links on the homepage's header may have trouble finding it once they click through to the rest of the site. In the case of Rishi Tea, because most people viewing the site will view both the homepage and the store section, most users will actually encounter this inconsistency.

I think, unless absolutely necessary, it is best to avoid this sort of inconsistency. Sometimes having different toolbars is necessary in different parts of your site, but I think that it is generally better to have a common, base toolbar that is the same on the whole site, and then add additional toolbars to other sections of the site, rather than having a completely different toolbar.

As a side note, I really like Rishi Tea and I think their website is actually quite good: easy-to-use and informative. I'm picking on them in part because I like them as a company and want to draw attention to a company that I feel good about supporting.

Do not build a separate website for your "store":

Not all tea companies sell directly through their website; some brands, like most of the tea brands owned by Unilever and other large companies, have strictly informational websites. However, most tea companies sell tea online. And, if you do sell tea online, through a company-owned online store, then by all means, sell your tea on your main website and do not build a separate site for your store.

Why? People will come preferentially to your company's main website, and you will lose sales if your store is compartmentalized in a separate section or hosted on a separate domain, and not fully integrated into your site. Many people will visit your site and may not even know that you sell things online. Here's an example of a company that separates its store in a way that I think is likely causing them to lose a lot of potential sales. The following screenshot is from the homepage of Equal Exchange, a brand of fair-trade goods that sells tea, among many other products:



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