Love at first click

Tazo Tea, which is distributed by Starbucks, has an interesting website. The only thing though about Tazo.com, it’s a one-off website—I doubt if people ever make more than one or two visits. (Unfortunately, Tazo.com has a pop-up that sometimes doesn't work. Also, it disables the browser back button. Here's the link, which will open in a new window.)

First, I'll tell you what I like about the website. The design has both an old-time look, as well as a contemporary (notice the steam rising from the tea) design. On the “Explore our Teas” page, it divides the teas into black, green, and what it calls herbal infusions, and it provides a little history on the teas.

The page I really like is “Consult the Tea Leaves.” Type in your name and answer two questions, and then the tea reader does his stuff. Today, he said: “I see you watching the sun in Hawaii.” Nice thought. Notice the eyes of the tea-reader follow your mouse movements.

But, as I mentioned, this is a one-off adventure. I’ll probably never visit the site again. The exception would be if I were travelling and wanted to find where I could buy Tazo Tea. But I’m not that much of a tea nut-case to need this particular brand. Stash would do, or even the less expensive, Tetley Tea.

What I don’t like about the Tazo Tea website are the small frames. These require clicking on arrows in order to read the full text, something I hate.

A website that I check periodically is Darren Barefoot’s. I’ve bookmarked this website on my browser bar. So I can fit as many as possible bookmarks on my browser bar, I shorted the names of the websites. For example, Darren Barefoot’s is shortened to DB and sits in between Con (a money conversion site) and Dict (to dictionary.com). I have 31 buttons now (in addition to bookmarked pages in the drop-down menu, and in addition to my bookmarked pages).

I can’t remember how I first found Darren’s website. He was a technical writer, so perhaps I saw his name through browsing the STC website. Darren’s home page is a blog; I’m amazed at the amount of stuff he’s in touch with. In addition to continuously updating his personal website, he operates a company called Capulet Communications. It’s the content of Darren’s website that I like, but also it’s easy to get around.

I rather like Capulet’s website too, because I like the grey background and love black and white photographs. The designer adds a nice touch with white hairlines around the photos rather than using common black hairline. I also like the ease of getting around it. The copy is short. Great.

Capulet Communications’ website has the feature I like the best. I can increase the size of text by hitting Ctrl-+ (or Ctrl- - to reduce) and everything increases nicely. On some sites, when you increase the size parts overlap and make it difficult to read. Perhaps this is due to the use of frames. Another thing I like about the Capulet website is that the width is on the narrow size (like this blog design).