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Electronic Commerce
Web Site Evaluation:
Peet's Coffees and Teas
October 1998
Introduction
One
sentence description of site:
Peet's Coffees and Teas (www.peets.com)
is one of the country's most well-known, small, independent coffee roasters,
and they offer a popular monthly coffee delivery service.
Background: When I saw the link for Peet's on the Hotbot Shopping Directory, I recalled when I worked for a university department. One of the professors I worked for had a subscription to their monthly delivery service and raved about their coffees. She gave me a bag for the office coffee pot and I really liked it, too. Since then, many other people have spoken to me about how much they like this company. A comment I hear often is that they're like what Starbuck's used to be before they went corporate. So, considering their very favorable reputation even here in the Midwest for strong customer service and the highest quality coffees, I decided to take a look at their electronic commerce-enabled web site. Below, you'll find first some general comments about the site based on my first impressions of it, and below that is a brief evaluation of their electronic commerce strategy.
General comments on the site
- Nice color palette and graphics. Aesthetically pleasing, professionally done. The look and feel fits the products and company very well.
- I like the two animated email gifs at the bottom of every page. One opens to reveal a "Dear Peet's" letter, the other opens to reveal a big question mark. The former is for email about the web site, the latter is for people who have questions about their orders, as indicated by the labels under them. I generally find animated gifs annoying, but considering how easy it would be to confuse the two email addresses otherwise, it makes sense here.
- Many headers are underlined and in red, so I futilely try to click on them. On the Web, when text is underlined it generally means it's a link. Meanwhile, the cursor doesn't change to a finger over many of the images that are links.
- On the catalog request form page, the "submit request" and "clear form" buttons are so small I almost overlooked them.
- There's a nice page called Customer Tales in the Coffee & Tea Information section where customers can submit poetry and personal stories. Adds a nice sense of "community" to the site.
- Also off the Coffee & Tea Information page is an area called Peet's Journal. It looks like each month they get a different person to write about their coffee- & tea-related adventures. This month, a fellow writes about his visit to tea plantations in India.
- There's no linkage between the web site and some of the advertising I've seen in magazines. Specifically, when you subscribe to their monthly coffee delivery service, I saw in an ad that you get a coffee maker or French press as a gift. The only way to sign up online for the delivery service is by going through the order process and on the page asking credit card info by clicking the choice list for delivery every X number of days. One would think the delivery service would be a big money maker so they would want to give it greater prominence on the web site.
- There's no button at the top called "Order tea here", but there is for coffee.
- There is no privacy statement. How are they going to use my email address after I've given it to them when I requested a catalog or ordered something?
- I actually ordered a
bag of coffee. The order flow was okay, but could be improved, I
think.
- It starts by reading the review of a coffee type, organized by continent. I am partial to Guatemalan Antigua, so I took a good look at the reviews of the Latin American coffees.
- Right next to the header for Guatemalan, I clicked on the "To order" graphic and it took me to a page with all of the Latin American coffee types on it (but the order in which they're listed on the page is different from the order of the reviews page).
- There's a nice description of Latin American coffees in general, plus a useful "brewing tips & instructions" link. I located the Guatemalan coffee on the list. There are three columns following each one: price per bag, a field in which to enter quantity, and a choice list in which to choose grind options. Right below that is an "add to cart" graphic.
- After clicking on the cart graphic, it took me to a page showing all the items in my shopping cart (the word "Guatemala" had a helpful "added" graphic next to it), estimated shipping and total cost amounts. I think an important link is missing here -- an easy way to get back to the list of coffees. Do they expect people to only order 1 bag at a time? Don't they want to make to make it easy for people to order a 2nd or nth number of bags?
- I clicked on the "submit order" button and it took me to an SSL page with a form requesting address, credit card info, etc. Some nice features: I could choose to have the order repeated every X number of days; I could leave special instructions (like leave the delivery on the back porch); and I could include a special message (like "Thanks for your hard work!" or "Happy birthday!").
- Finally, I clicked on the "Place order" button and the system took me to a confirmation page listing my order number, date, shipping address, and list of items. However, there's no "Thank you for your order!" text, nor "Please browse our site. Have you seen the Customer Tales section?"-type of link encouraging the customer to stay around. (But the line of category links at the top of the page does remain.)
Evaluation
of Electronic Commerce Strategy
For
a modest ecommerce site, I think it works just fine. There's ample
information to help you make an informed decision about the products,
such as product reviews, tips on brewing, and so on. As Peet's seems to
have a loyal, almost cultish following among people outside of California,
there are some nice stories about the history of the company, some
cool customer stories, and Peet's Journal.Of course, you can find out
where your local Peet's is located, and learn about employment
opportunities (through email -- no resume submission form). However,
there are several ways that I could see their beefing up the ecommerce
abilities of the site to really build up the site traffic and increase
sales.
First, Peet's should increase the capabilities of the site to serve its large number of mail order customers. A professor I used to work for had a half dozen bags of Peet's coffee in her freezer because she couldn't drink it fast enough. If Peet's allowed people to register and set up accounts, then customers could go on the site every month or two to manage their coffee subscriptions. For example, this month they might substitute a different (higher cost?) type of coffee, while next month they might want to skip because they have too much of a back log.Or, with the account already set up, it'd be great for the customer to log in, find a coffee or tea to send to a colleague or friend, and at the click of a button send it off, conveniently billing the account holder without having to resubmit that credit card information. This could be an effective way to raise the barriers of competition with brick-and-mortar coffee shops.
Second, a feature which I loved on Eddie Bauer's site was a gift registry. I wish more sites had this feature. If Peet's were to get more into the online sales gig, offering additional items from espresso machines to French presses to t-shirts (which they already sell in their brick-and-mortar stores), then they should definitely set up a gift registry. At Christmas time, or graduation, or a wedding, or whatever occasion, a customer could set up wish lists and send the URL for their personalized gift registry to their friends, family, and colleagues. They could see what items hadn't been bought yet and order them for that person. And of course while they're there, wouldn't it be nice if they picked up a bag of coffee or other merchandise for themselves?
Third, Peet's should follow the lead of Amazon.com in offering incentives for people to put the Peet's graphic and a direct link on their web sites. This clever tactic, Amazon's Associates Program, was one of the reasons Amazon.com became so well known so quickly. Although Peet's currently does allow people to put the graphic and link on their web sites, the whole process seems to be more of a strategy to control who links and how they link to Peet's, rather than a strategy expressly to expand the network of Peet's aficionados actively promoting the company (for free!). There is currently no incentive for people to put the graphic and link on their site. Whereas Amazon rewards Associates members with cash for every link leading to a purchase, maybe Peet's could offer something a little more reasonable for the company, such as points redeemable for Peet's coffees, teas, and other products.
Fourth, Peet's should consider building its relationship with customers through email. There's a page called "New at Peet's" listing new coffees and teas. It would be very nice if the company could inform customers that they've gotten some exciting new products in and inviting people to come in and check them out (and possibly order samples!). Such a program should be voluntary, though. People could volunteer for it when they submit an order request. A word of caution on this, though: Peet's already has a friendly, folksy image. They would want to exploit technology like this in a way that doesn't reflect negatively on themselves. So, they might want to send only infrequent notices to the customers who request them rather than spamming them, and perhaps offering discounts or specials on some items only to the email customers.
Conclusion
In
conclusion, the current, catalog-style version of Peet's Coffee and Tea
web site is functional but basic -- qualities that don't set one
apart in the crowded online ecommerce arena. It's an additional outlet
for people, especially far away, to gain access to their famous coffees
and teas. However, I doubt that they're currently making a great deal
of money off the web site, certainly not as much as they could. Peet's
could better leverage its goodwill and the value of the relationship it
has with customers by personalizing their interactions with the company
through features like the ones mentioned above. The welcome side effects
of serving the customer better should be increased sales and an even better
reputation for this privately held company.
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