[HN Gopher] Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
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Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
Author : amoopa
Score : 248 points
Date : 2022-12-15 14:59 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medusajs.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medusajs.com)
| [deleted]
| password4321 wrote:
| Talk about free advertising!
|
| _Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I 've ever used_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32976978
|
| (1402 points | 2022-09-25 | 494 comments)
|
| iancmceachern > _I 'll gladly pay 2, 3, 5, even 10x the price to
| get it from McMaster. The service, the CAD models, I have what I
| need the next day._
| ckemere wrote:
| Unmentioned is the helpful explanation text in some categories,
| for example if you search for "compressed air fittings", you get
| a small box labeled "How to Identify and Measure Fittings" at the
| top of the page that can be expanded. Included in this is a table
| of *all* the different kinds of fittings, including measurements.
| In my case, I had something that I didn't know what was and this
| allowed me to identify it, then narrow my search for compatible
| parts.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Other discussion mentioned in article:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32976978
| dieselgate wrote:
| I love mcmaster and it's cool to see an article explaining their
| website design intent. Recently discovered Digikey and Mouser
| last night (via a random HN comment actually) and it was just
| what I was looking for (a more electronics focused Mcmaster
| basically) - but the websites have a similar filter/taxonomy
| which was refreshing to see. No B.S.! I do have some
| business/commercial reasons for shopping these vendors (which is
| how I'm familiar with mcmaster in the first place) but my life
| really started to change for the better when I started leveraging
| them for personal projects.
|
| Had a kick to make biodiesel and mcmaster was still the best
| place I could find to buy methanol
|
| Edit: mcmaster just exudes the essence of "engineering" to me -
| it's amazing to be able to find parts by their
| size/dimensions/material/finish rather than jumbling together
| things that "work". Reminds me of the joke: "a mathmagician
| calculates the volume of a ball by integral; a physicist
| calculates the volume of a ball by water displacement; an
| engineer just looks up the part number in {mcmaster}"
| thedangler wrote:
| I'm confused about medusajs. It has an API but yet I can't find
| anything about other SDK's. Are you locked into only using JS?
| olivermrbl wrote:
| Medusa is a headless API, so you are free to consume it from
| wherever you want whether it be a React-based storefront, a C#
| backend, or something third - there's really no limitations.
|
| But the source code of the open-source project is written in
| Node.js, so if you looking to contribute, you are forced to
| write JS.
|
| Re SDKs, there's an official JS SDK and a community-led Flutter
| SDK - that I know of. The former can be found in the GitHub
| repository here:
| https://github.com/medusajs/medusa/tree/master/packages/medu...
|
| Disclaimer, I am co-author of the project.
| thedangler wrote:
| Thank you. I'm actually going to be building a B2B app for a
| client soon and this will help a lot.
| olivermrbl wrote:
| Don't hesitate to reach out. We are amid extending our B2B
| capabilities, so it would be super interesting to learn
| about your client's requirements. And your own.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| mcmaster, rockauto, digikey, ...
|
| don't tell anyone, they'll "modernise" them and fuck it all up.
| blamazon wrote:
| Tip: have a fun car that you buy rockauto parts for? Send them
| a photo by email for their magnet series! They do a new one
| every month and so they can often oblige you within a few
| months. They send you a stack of magnets with your car on them,
| and of course there's a chance they'll be included in everyone
| else's orders. A few of my cars have appeared on rockauto
| magnets and they bring me much joy.
| mbauman wrote:
| Digikey's empty search for the entire catalog listing in
| categories (and then extraordinary filtering tools within
| categories) is absolute perfection.
| millzlane wrote:
| Rockauto sends the wrong parts and list the wrong parts for
| certain cars. Not a fan any longer. I now will call around
| dealerships some will let you open a personal account with them
| and give you a better pricing. Just call the parts departments.
|
| ULPT: Another thing you can do when you call is just ask "Whats
| our price on it?" They will ask who you are with. Just mention
| the name of the largest specialty ship matching the brand of
| the place you are calling. They almost always have an account.
| Now just say you'll come and pay and pickup in person. "I'm
| sending the new guy" Now you just got your car part at the MAP
| price.
| bze12 wrote:
| I wrote the original article they're basing this on. I kinda wish
| they would've linked my article directly in their post (although
| they linked the original HN thread). Especially since this post
| basically just reskinned mine for SEO and missed some important
| substance IMO.
|
| https://www.bedelstein.com/post/mcmaster-carr
| skilled wrote:
| This year's UI/UX trends have been an absolute disaster. Many
| brands are now using some kind of an amalgamation of animations +
| on-scroll effects that transition into this linear 3D experience.
| Replit is a good example of this, even though what they are doing
| is quite tame to what I have seen.
|
| Now, the crazy thing about this trend is that I honestly just
| close the page whenever I encounter it. And I am 100% positive
| that many other people do this, too. So, unless your brand has
| outstanding reputation and you were introduced to their service
| through word of mouth, a lot of these bombastic landing pages are
| left to rot by themselves.
|
| And lastly, these pages are supposed to leave you feeling
| something, or at the very least - fire up a neuron or two in your
| brain because the experience is refreshing. I have not
| experienced that a single time. And I bookmark quite a lot of
| random pages I am inspired by from a design perspective.
| abraae wrote:
| > This year's UI/UX trends have been an absolute disaster. Many
| brands are now using some kind of an amalgamation of animations
| + on-scroll effects that transition into this linear 3D
| experience. Replit is a good example of this, even though what
| they are doing is quite tame to what I have seen.
|
| Probably because those trends are set by UI designers sitting
| in ivory towers.
|
| If UI trends were instead set by people who actively used sites
| over and over for their day job, they would be far more
| appropriate and effective.
| analognoise wrote:
| I wish I could take a "Mechanical engineering with CAD and
| McMaster Carr" class.
|
| So speaking of - this is probably the best place on the internet
| to ask - does anyone know of something like that?
| steve76 wrote:
| taeric wrote:
| I don't know. Fangamer and a few other small inventory sites work
| remarkably well for me, as well.
| trey-jones wrote:
| McMaster-Carr out-Amazons Amazon when it comes to specialty items
| that you can't find online anywhere else. For a lot of product
| categories they have every conceivable variation that you might
| need. Specifically in the past I've used them for electric
| relays. I don't know of a brick and mortar locally that has the
| selection that I want, and you won't find these on Amazon. Next
| stop? McMaster.com.
|
| One thing that annoyed me recently:
|
| They don't take Discover. This led to me attempting to pay with
| an old Visa debit card which appeared to be accepted at checkout.
| In fact, they even shipped my order, and _then_ sent me an email
| about my card being declined. It was a small order, but it still
| surprised me that they shipped without confirming payment. So I
| have an outstanding invoice. Not a huge deal, and as others have
| mentioned they do actually answer the phone, and you can talk to
| a human being about whatever customer service issue you might
| have.
| roflyear wrote:
| This is a good thing IMO often you need a part right away.
| McMaster sends before they worry about you paying for it. They
| are a really solid company. I order from them whenever I can.
| bombcar wrote:
| One thing people overlook with McMaster is that the parts mostly
| stick around. If you found it there once, it'll be there again
| later, and the same part number.
|
| How many times have I found something on Amazon, bought it, loved
| it, and go to buy another and it's just entirely gone, not even a
| suggestion of what a replacement might be.
| xal wrote:
| Everything you need and highlight here can be done on a basic
| Shopify plan and via the liquid templating engine. It would run
| super fast, edge deployed globally.
|
| The problem is that no one wants this, so we don't even have
| templates like this anymore. We used to ~10-15y ago and those
| would still work perfectly.
| gumby wrote:
| Unmentioned is the origin of much of this value:
|
| > McMaster-Carr shoppers don't encounter distractions; you can
| see proof of this on the homepage which jumps right into the
| action:
|
| The web site is based on the paper catalogue (book), from layout,
| visual interface, and organization. The paper version was
| excellent and useful. Instead of trying all sorts of "fun" (for
| the designer) web capabilities, they focused on ohw the web could
| augment what they were already successfully doing. No redesign
| for design's sake.
|
| Some of the best paper catalogues like McMaster and Sigma had
| excellent, customer-centered design, which led to long term
| loyalty. Easy to find what you needed, and useful as references,
| not just as a place to buy. They have retained that philosophy
| into the web world.
|
| Compare this to, say, Amazon where Amazon's needs are prioritized
| over the customers', with the obvious result of reduced loyalty
| and the need to shore that up with rewards (prime, discounts,
| advertising).
| azalemeth wrote:
| I wish Amazon was more like McMaster Carr or RS or any of the
| good websites. The ability to have filters that are meaningful
| (sort by random technical parameters, filter by dimensions or
| manufacturer, warranty, lead time, item location and that of
| manufacture, as well as price) and datasheets that were
| informative world be absolutely fantastic. I'm probably spoilt
| by datasheets for chips but God I miss them elsewhere...
| ooklala wrote:
| I'm surprised you mention RS in the same breath as McMaster--
| their website is awful. Yes, you can put in very detailed
| parameters, but if you want a fairly generic part (like a
| DPDT 12v relay) you're presented with hundreds of options,
| only one of which will be in stock-- which they only tell you
| after you add it to your trolley... Given that RS is mostly
| 'I need one of this part, tomorrow' the inability to filter
| by stock completely ruins the usability of the site. It's bad
| enough that I just use Farnell or Rapid--who both let you
| filter by stock--despite their sometimes worse selection.
| (and about a year or so ago the RS site stored state on the
| server side so if you hit the back button, or opened
| something in a new window the site would freak out and bring
| you back to the homepage)
| analog31 wrote:
| I learned so much from keeping a copy of the yellow catalog in
| the bathroom. Like, how many different kinds of nuts and bolts
| and fittings there are. I still remember that stuff when a
| colleague is trying to design something.
|
| In addition to a paper catalog that "just worked," they started
| out with a business that just worked, before the Internet came
| along. I'd say that Mouser and Digi-Key stand out in that
| regard too. About 25 years ago I remember calling McMaster and
| ordering a heavy steel machine base. It showed up the next day
| on a flat bed truck, and had to be unloaded with the forklift.
| It must have been drop shipped from their supplier, meaning
| they had already worked out a huge amount of logistics stuff
| before ever going online.
| divbzero wrote:
| I believe the parent is referring to Sigma-Aldrich?
|
| Here is an example of their search results:
|
| https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/search/edta
| gumby wrote:
| Indeed, I was referring to Sigma's and Fisher's old _paper
| catalogues_. Mcmaster seems to have done the best at
| preserving that value.
| hammock wrote:
| >Compare this to, say, Amazon where Amazon's needs are
| prioritized over the customers'
|
| I'm not sure that's the whole story. A critical point is that
| this is a B2B site. The people shopping here would tend to have
| a need in mind that can be solved by finding the exact right
| part that meets their specifications.
|
| By comparison, the typical consumer shopping experience is much
| more one of discovery, not need-solution mnatching. Keep in
| mind the average HN user is not the typical shopper. You and I
| might like to "get in and get out" but so many consumer
| shoppers LOVE to go to a place like Target or HomeGoods and
| browse around aimlessly, window shop, discover, explore - and
| that indicates a far different type of UX than what B2B would
| look like. These shoppers value stimulus, sparks of ideas,
| reviews and testimonials, and all the other "cruft" that was
| removed from McMaster.com
| geodel wrote:
| > By comparison, the typical consumer shopping experience is
| much more one of discovery, not need-solution mnatching.
|
| Even if I put full fucking detail with brand and model I keep
| getting pages and pages of random products with different
| "sponsored" brands, model, features and so on. Its clearly
| need of Amazon are taking priority over mine.
|
| > Keep in mind the average HN user is not the typical
| shopper. You and I might like to "get in and get out" but so
| many consumer shoppers ...
|
| Yes I love to stores and see various items that I wouldn't
| typically buy. I could even go to, say Costco website to see
| random "newly arrived seasonal items".
|
| But on shopping websites when searching for products most
| people are not looking to enjoy "incredible joys of
| discovery" by being forced to scroll through search results
| for things which they haven't even searched for.
|
| Its purely ads and "marketplace" bullshitery from Amazon and
| others.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| A critical component of being able to change high rates for
| sponsorship is to not show people precisely what they're
| looking for. Also, once people find what they're looking
| for they stop looking which reduces ad impressions.
|
| Amazon are just in the exploit stage of the build-exploit
| cycle and are making so much money doing it I doubt they'll
| stop.
| geodel wrote:
| True. Founder CEO is out. Incoming one just has to keep
| growing ad business and leave Amazon with probably
| billion dollar retirement/severance package. After all it
| wouldn't be unheard of in 1-2 decades.
| novok wrote:
| I find when amazon doesn't show what I want when I get
| specific, it's because they don't really sell it. When they
| do, it matches pretty close or 1:1 fairly quickly. Also
| notice they're not good about items that have a lot of
| customization, like macbooks that a very specific config or
| something like shoes that let you chose 6 different color
| combos for various parts. For those speciality things I
| find you just need to go to the brand store which creates
| custom software for it. Maybe your looking for things they
| don't sell or is pretty customizable?
| spchampion2 wrote:
| > Even if I put full fucking detail with brand and model I
| keep getting pages and pages of random products with
| different "sponsored" brands, model, features and so on.
| Its clearly need of Amazon are taking priority over mine.
|
| When inside of a real brick and mortar store, have you
| walked by one of those displays on the ends of a row that's
| selling Pepsi products or Doritos? How do you think those
| things got there? They're called end caps, and stores make
| a lot of money from brands to put them there because
| customers are more likely to see them and purchase
| whatever.
|
| Also, have you noticed that the shelves at stores usually
| contain the most well known brands at eye level while the
| cheap stuff or weird stuff is usually down low or up high?
| That may be store optimization, but more commonly those top
| brands pay for that eye-level placement.
|
| Amazon didn't invent this. They just came up with the
| digital equivalent of what stores have been doing for
| decades.
| geodel wrote:
| I can ignore displays and go to right aisle to choose on
| products. On Amazon there is no equivalent. If they just
| ignore my search request I am stuck with trawling through
| irrelevant results.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Amazon search may have lots of results that I don't care
| about, but is generally accurate on the first try.
|
| The brick and mortar experience is ostensibly 10x worse
| than being able to use a search box. Grocery stores and
| Home improvement stores are the worst - I probably spend
| 80% of my time there trying find where things are, with
| the overhead labels generally being useless.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Yes, of course end caps are doing the same thing,
| prioritizing the store's needs over the shopper's. They
| pull the same shit with how they lay out the store, to
| make you spend more time in it and travel over more of
| it. Which turns out to mean they're not just prioritizing
| profit over what's personally best for their shoppers,
| but also over _public health_ , when there's serious
| infectious disease on the loose--which is all the time,
| and especially every Winter, but we got a particularly
| memorable lesson in the cost of that sort of thing,
| rather recently.
| julianlam wrote:
| I was (and still am) frustrated with Amazon's practice of
| showing me what _they_ think I want, instead of what I
| searched for. It violates a basic tenet of the server-
| client relationship, serve what the client asked for.
|
| I was happy to discover that AliExpress didn't do these
| shenanigans. You search for an item, it shows matches.
| Wonderful -- and then they changed it, so now halfway
| through your results, you'll see completely unrelated
| items.
|
| So now it's just a garbage web filled with garbage results.
| davnn wrote:
| I have made the opposite experience. I enjoy the search
| results Amazon provides, but find it incredibly difficult
| to find the right product on AliExpress. How do you
| navigate the seemingly auto-translated jungle of similar
| products on AliExpress?
| geodel wrote:
| Exactly right. And considering how many here do
| _appreciate_ Amazon 's position here, to me, it just
| shows Amazon/ e-commerce web sites have conditioned tons
| of users to find terrible user experience agreeable.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Wonder how much of that is actually a preference of typical
| consumers, and how much it is just being forced on them.
|
| > _stimulus, sparks of ideas, reviews and testimonials, and
| all the other "cruft" that was removed from McMaster.com_
|
| In meatspace this is often discussed as customer-abusive
| design - overloading senses with shapes, colors, sounds and
| smells, confusing and ever-changing shop layout forcing
| shoppers to wander and explore, defeating the no.1. normal
| people advice for responsible shopping - make a list
| beforehand and stick to it.
|
| I don't think HNers are that much different. We complain
| more, because we know more about how the web works, and
| realize things could be much better.
| geodel wrote:
| Great point.
|
| At this point it is pretty clear Amazon is fattened on
| sweet billions from ads. To add insult to injury they also
| get to say _We are delighted to offer ten thousand brands
| of USB cable in hundreds of colors to suit every personal
| style_
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Wonder how much of that is actually a preference of
| typical consumers, and how much it is just being forced on
| them.
|
| I can just about guarantee it's _mostly_ the latter.
|
| My elderly dad was shown how to do a couple things on
| Craigslist, years ago, and has been using it without
| assistance for years.
|
| Meanwhile he often has to ask for help with the fucking
| _phone app_ on his phone. And every time Google updates it
| or he gets a new phone, he has to figure it all out again.
| For _no_ benefit, just to be able to do the same shit he
| already could.
|
| Design thrashing and all kinds of slow-downs and animations
| and "helpful" pop-ups and crap make things harder on
| _everyone_ , it's just that some of us can push past it. It
| has a cost, but we become blind to it because we're _so
| used_ to putting up with it. A few seconds lost there, a
| couple minutes here, but we 've forgotten about it by the
| end of the day. For those on the edges it's catastrophic to
| their ability to actually use their devices for anything.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| McMaster is also better for wandering the aisles than Amazon!
| Just hop onto a catalog page, and see related item after
| item.
|
| Amazon tries to sell you things that are cross-correlated, so
| if you buy tiny resealable bags for your board game
| collection, they try to sell you portable precision scales.
| dahdum wrote:
| > McMaster is also better for wandering the aisles than
| Amazon! Just hop onto a catalog page, and see related item
| after item.
|
| It's all fun and games until you get blocked for viewing
| too many pages. Been a few years since I needed to use them
| but that was always super annoying.
| gumby wrote:
| Ordinary people are well known to suffer from "choice
| fatigue" and overstimulation. In a supermarket though it's
| considered a zero sum race between independent players.
|
| On a web site run by a single entity that need not be the
| case.
|
| > all the other "cruft" that was removed from McMaster.com
|
| The point of my comment is that crap was not _removed_ but
| rather was never introduced in the first place.
| ckemere wrote:
| Does anyone remember Small Parts? They had an awesome catalog
| somewhat akin to McMaster. When Amazon bought them out, for a
| year or two, Amazon search maintained the really detailed
| category stuff and was approaching McMaster utility for things
| like machine screws. But then, like much with Amazon, it died.
|
| I'm very much confused about why there aren't more Amazon
| competitors that do better with this sort of UI stuff and charge
| more. At this point, I'm happy to pay a 10% (or maybe even 50%)
| tax from McMaster or Digikey because of the time and effort it
| saves and the backend customer service if something goes wrong.
| When I started my university lab 10 years ago, I was so excited
| by what Amazon is doing. At this point, the only reason I still
| use them is that its hard to set up sales tax exemptions with all
| the small vendors. If someone could automate that process in
| checkout, I'd never use Amazon for work...
| danuker wrote:
| The website speed is also worthy of praise. When I visit
| McMaster.com, I get DOMContentLoaded: 348 ms. When I visit
| Amazon.com, I get 2.39 SECONDS, and this is with a 10-core
| monster of a CPU.
| [deleted]
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, I love McMaster - but I feel like people
| attempt to over apply their patterns everywhere else.
|
| I feel like all of the discussion misses a key point - when you
| shop on McMaster, you already have a very detailed idea of what
| you're looking for. McMaster becomes rather difficult to use if
| you don't know exactly what you're looking for. Many of the
| product categories get rolled up as representative products. Many
| products have meaningful variations nested deep. It's very hard
| to quickly scroll through a list of items to figure out what
| might be represent you needs.
|
| Now, that's not necessarily a problem McMaster should fix. They
| cater to the professional market. They cater to people who know
| exactly what they want. They can do this because their products
| are mostly derived off market standards.
|
| There's a _very_ good chance that your user base won't be the
| same. There's a very good chance that your user base won't know
| they need a "Surface-Mount Lift-Off Hinges with Holes made of
| stainless with XYZ dimensions".
| mauvehaus wrote:
| It's because they'll have your order at your door next day for an
| extremely reasonable cost of shipping. Nobody excels at pick,
| pack, and ship like McMaster-Carr.
|
| Where they can be a little tough is searching for things you
| don't know the exact name for. I needed screws that have a smooth
| section to run through a bushing with a fairly tight tolerance.
| You know: turns freely but doesn't rattle. I spent hours looking
| until I finally found what I was looking for (shoulder screws).
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I hate to mention it but this would be a killer feature of a
| ChatGPT like search. Imagine being able to describe something
| in such vague terms and get a good answer.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| Yet another tech-focused writer speaking with misguided authority
| on design, assuming their usage requirements mirror everyone
| else's when their perspective is pretty unique.
|
| That's not to say that the The McMaster site is in any way bad.
| It is visually simple, relatively free from distractions, and
| straightforward, and served its target demographic well. It
| frustrates me to no end when marketers ( _not designers,
| generally_ ) insist on shoving crap in people's faces because
| metrics show the hard sell works.
|
| That said, their design was made for a specific type of shopper
| and is not remotely generalizable to everyone else.
|
| People used to looking at screens of code all day, and those who
| know e-commerce platforms inside and out might not miss the
| abject lack of visual hierarchy and very obvious visual cues. The
| overwhelming majority of users would.
|
| Also, if the color schema impedes usability, the problem is the
| design, not color. Having all of the images in grayscale is great
| for selling machine parts or technical equipment... And pretty
| much nothing else. Color is an incredibly important part of how
| most people choose products. Removing it creates a ton of work
| for the majority of users who need it. Trying to find one
| particular type of soap you forgot the name of but it has that
| green stripe across the label... Forget it. Also, I'm really not
| sure why so many people have such a hard time acknowledging that
| branding is an important and legitimate way for companies to
| communicate about the things they sell, and an important part of
| how most shoppers orient themselves in marketplaces.
|
| Many people shop without knowing exactly what they need, and
| displays/carousels/suggestions help people figure it out. That's
| why they're there.
|
| If visual flourish or whimsy impede usability, that's also a
| problem with the design and not a problem with visual flourish.
|
| Most people shop at grocery stores instead of discount clubs, and
| discount clubs instead of restaurant supply warehouses. Why? Most
| of the products are equivalent or better the further up you go,
| dramatically cheaper, and presented in a progressively less
| gussied-up and more information-focused buying experience. Most
| people in the US have the storage space, too. One big reason is
| the look and feel. It's just a more pleasant overall experience.
| Seeing the colorful packages on the shelves, having a more
| intimate space to shop in with music playing rather than a
| utilitarian corrugated metal box. Perusing magazines during
| checkout. That's why Piggly Wiggly easily snatched the market out
| of the hands of traditional counter service provisioners and
| small single-product vendors. As a chef, it is the opposite of
| what I need. Purveyors sold me goods using an interface even more
| straightforward than McMaster: a printed text list with a place
| where I could indicate the quantity I needed. Anything more
| complicated would have been an impediment. Regular shoppers
| probably wouldn't even consider it.
|
| So this article should be retitled to express why it has the best
| UX for information-only shoppers who know exactly what they want
| that are very used to looking at content without dead-obvious
| visual hierarchy and don't care how anything looks as long as
| their bullet pointed requirements get met. Like it or not, that
| doesn't describe the overwhelming majority of shoppers.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| The article focuses on the UI, which is good, but the number one
| reason McMaster is the tops shopping experience (IMHO) is that
| they have a rock solid taxonomy. Every single product is
| meticulously categorized a dozen different ways, allowing me to
| drill down the feature tree to get exactly to the part I want. On
| Amazon even the product categories that have a few filters are
| hopelessly difficult to navigate. I'm stuck guessing at search
| terms and browsing "related" lists. If you want to build an
| Amazon killer, you can let UI, price and shipping slide, but nail
| your taxonomy and I'm in.
|
| See also digikey, parts-tree and rock auto.
| RajT88 wrote:
| The people listing the products are not trying to game the
| system with McMaster.
| ryloric wrote:
| Most underestimate how important laying out a clear map of your
| content is. Rather than letting the user build some
| incompletely inefficient map inside his head, lay it our
| clearly somewhere easily accessible.
|
| That's why I love websites with sitemaps or when their url
| scheme tells me the topology of content clearly.
| systems_glitch wrote:
| Indeed, one can search by your area's local trade name for an
| item and still find it in their catalog, even if no one else in
| the country calls it that!
|
| For an example that's not hyper-local, search "roll pin," which
| about half the world uses to describe that particular item. For
| a more dramatic example, search "hickey."
| chrisjc wrote:
| > rock solid taxonomy
|
| > On Amazon
|
| Although I have never used McMaster but use Amazon most of the
| time, I definitely agree. And it's not even really related to
| taxonomy. The amount of disorganized information on Amazon is
| frustrating and many times leads me to believe that something
| is just fake, drop-shit, subpar quality, etc... There's so much
| "WxHxD: 2", "color: yes", "weight: 34.6 inches" that I just end
| up buying something else or not at all
| kensai wrote:
| Does it offer a "I will know it when I see it" function?
| Sometimes I have in mind a specific tool or accessory, but not
| its specs necessarily.
| hedora wrote:
| I use Duck Duck Go image search for that.
|
| At some point deep learning will probably get to the point
| where you point a cell phone camera at the doodad, then prompt
| "wrench for this" or "missing piece", etc.
| kaizo34 wrote:
| What would a function like that look like?
| projektfu wrote:
| Naming things can be very hard. For this, it helps to have the
| paper catalog to flip through.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| One of the nice things about McMaster in my mind is the way
| their website is organized very much like their paper
| catalog. It's not as good as the paper catalog for casual
| browsing, but it does mean that when you're not quite sure
| what you actually need you can "flip through" the website and
| have a decent chance of spotting something like it.
|
| Unfortunately McMaster is a little stingy with their paper
| catalog, I think you have to hit a certain $$$ amount on
| orders before they send you one. I think that's fair, it's a
| pretty hefty book and presumably costs them a meaningful
| amount of money per copy. I'm always surprised with U-Line
| which now sends me _two_ of each edition of their catalog
| when I hardly ever order from them... I think they might be
| losing money on me as a customer at this point.
| jamincan wrote:
| You can ask Uline to have a note added to all your orders
| not to pack a catalogue.
| hedora wrote:
| I can't ethically purchase anything from U Line any more.
| Does anyone know of an alternative supplier?
|
| The U Line family has historically come out against things
| ranging from flouridation to Martin Luther King and
| currently supports election deniers / anti Semites. They
| are the number one donor to the Republican party:
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/uline-uihlein-election-
| de...
|
| Their working conditions are unbelievably sexist /
| restrictive (similar articles are available from
| journalists, if you don't trust glass door):
|
| https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Uline-
| RVW7...
|
| E.g.:
|
| > _Uline is privately owned and therefore does not have any
| stockholders to answer to. The dress code is business
| professional, which means guys have to wear ties. That in
| and of itself is not unheard of, what is unheard of is that
| women have to wear knee length skirts and panty hoes during
| the winter months and only around Memorial day can they
| stop wearing panty hoes. Hey Uline this is 2015 not 1950!
| This dress code is a directive from Liz the owner. Yes,
| women can wear pant suits but of course they have to match.
| I 'm trying to drive home that this place is run like a
| cult and it will destroy you if you stay there long
| enough._
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| I'm in the same boat, in fact I chuckled that the most
| recent U-Line catalog has a bit of a political rant from
| the founder in the back cover, something about social
| justice warriors. Most of what I get from U-Line I buy
| from a local business instead these days just for
| convenience and because I need relatively small
| quantities but... to be honest I think U-Line is their
| wholesale supplier. I'm on the hunt for a different way
| to get a wide variety of packing materials in relatively
| small quantities.
| ericwood wrote:
| There's many things to love about the design, but the fact that
| they use actual anchor tags and override the default behavior
| with JS is extremely frustrating and makes opening in a new tab
| impossible. When I'm looking for parts I tend to want to open up
| several categories or parts across a few tabs and they make it
| impossible. Horizontal scrolling is also remapped to scroll
| vertically as well, which breaks the trackpad swipe behavior for
| going forwards and backwards on MacOS.
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| > makes opening in a new tab impossible
|
| This has been happening to so many commerce sites for the last
| several years. It's infuriating. They absolutely hate the idea
| that you might want to look at several items at once.
|
| Anyway, in Firefox I kludge around it by right clicking the tab
| I'm on, selecting Duplicate Tab, then clicking the item in that
| new tab. Sometimes you gotta duplicate a lot that way, but it
| usually works.
| wl wrote:
| > They absolutely hate the idea that you might want to look
| at several items at once.
|
| B&H's bot detection will trigger on this from time to time.
| lh7777 wrote:
| Another option in Firefox: right clicking and selecting Open
| in new tab works on most (but not all) links in McMaster.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| What is it that doesn't work?
|
| I started at the home page and could middle click on both
| images and blue text, down to individual items. (Using Chrome
| from Linux.)
| ericwood wrote:
| Oh this is interesting; right click and "open in new tab"
| seems to work, but cmd+click (my preferred method) doesn't.
| They must have something else going on that interferes with
| it, very strange.
| recursive wrote:
| It all works on my machine. Firefox/Win11. Not sure what's
| happening for you.
| ericwood wrote:
| I'm on MacOS; I think I found the issue in the code they
| use for navigation. It's checking for ctrlKey on the
| MouseEvent and not MetaKey as well, which is what CMD
| maps to on MacOS. I might email them about it.
| azdle wrote:
| > There's many things to love about the design, but the fact
| that they use actual anchor tags and override the default
| behavior with JS is extremely frustrating and makes opening in
| a new tab impossible.
|
| I've only ever dabbled in webdev, but I thought this _was_ the
| right way to do it? Having an actual anchor tag with an href
| that overrides onclick means that your fancy javascripty
| partial page load works, but so does middle click and regular
| clicking without javascript. Is there some other way that's
| even more compatible?
|
| Middle-clicking everything on mcmaster's site seemed to work
| for me in firefox.
| ericwood wrote:
| They're most of the way to doing it correctly! What's missing
| is a few edge cases, such as ensuring the click is happening
| without modifier keys.
|
| This is how react-router handles it:
| https://github.com/remix-run/react-
| router/blob/main/packages...
| ipython wrote:
| I'm surprised nobody has mentioned information density yet. I
| find the modern practice of adding so much spacing and making the
| font size gigantic extremely annoying. Sometimes you need detail-
| and it's harder to put together a well designed information dense
| way of displaying that detail. Instead it seems everyone decides
| to just ignore that detail and make you click everywhere and
| scroll all day to find what you need.
| swah wrote:
| Went to the side again and it accepted both 'a' and '-2' as
| quantities... illusion broken.
| exhaze wrote:
| I think is article is written from an eng/design perspective and
| thus fails to address business realities.
|
| Example: "product pages are way too long"
|
| Product pages are long because longer pages tend to perform
| better at SEO. Furthermore, at least in my experience, longer
| product pages don't actually have a significantly negative impact
| for on-site conversion rates.
|
| Sure, maybe a better global maximum exists, and every once in a
| while a startup finds it and achieves great success.
|
| However, that kind of "bet the farm" mentality should be very
| intentional, not just based on design best practices, because in
| reality, companies live and die by their balance sheet, not by
| their UX best practices.
|
| This got a bit rant'y, but I just wanted to provide this
| counterpoint. I'd love to hear what others have to say - I feel
| this is such a complex, nuanced topic...
| chefandy wrote:
| It's the design musings of a non-designer who barely considers
| the actual discipline of design, let alone marketing. "This
| site suits my immediate needs best it must be best," is as good
| of a design practice as a naive non-developer slapping together
| some PHP and saying "well it runs great for me on my laptop so
| it must run great everywhere else."
|
| Someone who'd name a potentially customer-facing piece of
| software "Medusa" probably isn't considering users needs nearly
| as much as they assume. If a non-technical user saw an error
| with the word "Medusa" in it pop up on a website they just
| handed their credit card info to, even if things go fine,
| that's going to generate a lot of anxiety. _On the business
| side of things, stuff like that actually matters._
| s-video wrote:
| This is what crosses my mind and bugs me whenever I see an
| article like this. As much as I hate the Amazon-style pages, I
| understand they're like that because that's what their business
| is, and that saying everyone should do it like McMaster is
| pretty futile.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I don't know how to describe it succinctly, but I find there to
| be a stark category difference between what the article talks
| about and what you mention. In particular, the former is what I
| appreciate as a user, the latter is what I _hate_.
|
| > _Furthermore, at least in my experience, longer product pages
| don't actually have a significantly negative impact for on-site
| conversion rates._
|
| That's probably because e-commerce stores aren't commodity. The
| user is going to convert anyway, even if they hate every minute
| of the experience.
| mbauman wrote:
| > Product pages are long because longer pages tend to perform
| better at SEO
|
| If you own the category, however, folks will go directly to you
| instead of Google. I'm not googling for a 8-32 button head
| sheet metal screw.
| exhaze wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| But then it's more like brand-driven marketing - people
| literally typing your URL into their browser.
|
| Brands take a long time to build.
|
| New companies don't have a brand so they kinda have to go at
| it along the SEO route, especially in the early days.
| newbieuser wrote:
| site owners: no more effort is needed for this site. that's
| enough, don't bother anymore.
|
| hn: the most amazing site in the world!!
| juddlyon wrote:
| One advantage is that they keep the same design for many years so
| each time you use it you get better/faster. You know what to
| expect.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I have a gripe about McMaster.
|
| If I'm looking to buy some 316 stainless bolts, I'd like to see
| links to the applicable nuts for that size/material/threads/etc.
| For certain sizes, the nut selection can be limited and might not
| meet my needs. Then, I have to start over with 304 or something
| else. In my most recent case, I had to order some of the
| components from a different store.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| My gripe is they do ranges very poorly so you wind up spending
| a lot of time specifying an exhaustive set of possible sizes
| that may work in order to see all the various options of things
| that have some critical feature or dimension you need.
| 0cVlTeIATBs wrote:
| It is great, but one annoyance is it's pretty easy to buy a small
| threaded coupler with one side blank instead of threaded like the
| other side--uncommonly needed parts like this will show up in my
| searches higher than the more common variant, and it takes
| careful reading of the specs to differentiate.
|
| I like how rockauto puts heart symbols next to the commonly
| purchased parts.
| 0cVlTeIATBs wrote:
| Correction, not higher in my searches. But when browsing the
| table-like listing of all 1/2" NPT SS adapters, for instance, I
| have found it easy to accidentally buy a 1/2"-blank part
| instead of 1/2"-1/2"
| rkagerer wrote:
| Once you get the basics out of the way (e.g. clean interface) I
| personally find one of the biggest usability impacts comes from
| the fact the system know their products, and lets you filter by
| various properties (dimensions, material, etc) which are detailed
| and appropriate for the category.
|
| I wish Amazon did the same and offered more useful and accurate
| filtering. +/- operators would also be great (I know you can
| google site:amazon.ca +headset -bluetooth but it doesn't always
| work well).
| avmich wrote:
| The site doesn't work without JavaScript - no graceful
| degradation. For this reason alone I wouldn't consider it among
| the best.
|
| With JavaScript it's rather good though.
| blamazon wrote:
| A huge advantage of McMaster I didn't see enumerated is the 3D
| models - for nearly every fastener, and for certain other
| products, you can instantly grab a 3D model and bring it right
| into your CAD design. As far as I know no one else offers this,
| definitely not at the scale McMaster's dataset offers.
|
| An annoyance of McMaster I didn't see enumerated is how they
| don't show you the shipping cost until after transaction is
| complete. That's fine for my day job when I'm not paying, but
| when I order stuff for home projects I generally would like to
| know how much it costs to ship say, an 8 foot piece of steel
| tubing, before I click submit order. EDIT: they updated this
| apparently! See user Certified's comment below.
| Oxidation wrote:
| And the file you download is the file you need. You don't have
| to mess about with zip files containing one file.
| loeg wrote:
| They started showing shipping costs a few years ago. It was
| also my main complaint.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| That's it, then. McMaster-Carr is perfect.
|
| (Too bad my organization's procurement has become completely
| screwed up in the last 2-3 years...)
| techplex wrote:
| I've heard you can contact support to get a shipping quote
| before placing your order.
| loeg wrote:
| Yes, although it's no longer necessary -- shipping costs are
| reflected at checkout now.
| blamazon wrote:
| Their phone support is excellent, I will say. Still, to call
| for a ship quote is a bit of a faff that feels intentionally
| anachronistic.
| dieselgate wrote:
| Seriously - how many "large" stores can you just call up
| and actually not have to wait on hold to talk to someone
| who is helpful, kind, and knowledgeable? Mcmaster is great
| at what they do
| blamazon wrote:
| Heck, forget the phone, I had an extended job once across
| the street from the New Jersey McMaster warehouse
| (Robbinsville Twnship) and you can go in there to get the
| same treatment. We spent A LOT of money on same day
| parts.
| spinningarrow wrote:
| That makes its absence even more strange - presumably then
| they should be able to expose that functionality to the user?
| [deleted]
| hadlock wrote:
| Shipping is a Hard Problem, especially when dealing with
| large volume (bigger than UPS, usually strapped to a
| pallet) objects, and/or very dense objects (cartons of
| metal nuts and bolts). You still need to call your freight
| person and get a quote directly from the carrier over the
| phone. Low density LTL (less than truckload) is a pretty
| known quantity and delivering to a known business (like
| Walmart warehouses) with a loading dock is easy. Delivering
| two pallet loads of high density metal to a single story
| engineering office in an office park with no facilities to
| service an 18-wheeler (let alone allow one to
| enter/maneuver) is another thing entirely.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > As far as I know no one else offers this, definitely not at
| the scale McMaster's dataset offers.
|
| As an industrial engineer, most of my vendors offer this. I can
| get 3D CAD for robot arms, grippers, IO blocks, motors,
| cameras, enclosures, valves, cylinders, and just about
| everything else that goes in my machines. However, you're right
| that these don't have the same scale that McMaster does;
| they're selling the huge variety of nuts and bolts that bring
| these separate vendors together.
|
| One of the underrated parts of this kind of CAD offering is
| that you can test out 3D printed parts directly from their CAD.
| Not sure if you're accurately understanding their otherwise
| very helpful documentation on the gear modulus of that thousand
| dollar hardened, ground steel rack-and-pinion? Download the
| step file and print it in a few bucks of PLA. No, it won't
| actually be strong enough to move that 3-ton casting even once,
| but you can trivially check that the meshing works as you
| expect.
| [deleted]
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Although I've had an engineer fuss at me for using McMaster's
| bolt models in a rather complicated assembly. They actually
| model the threads and all the little details of the head,
| which make for a much larger model.
|
| *People who don't work in CAD may not get it, but threaded
| interfaces are basically modeled with cylinders that overlap
| where the threads are engaged. It's funny what gets
| represented accurately and what doesn't, but just remember
| that the map is not the territory!
| johnwalkr wrote:
| One thing they offer which is really uncommon is parametric
| models instead of geometric models only. It's like getting
| the source code instead of only a binary file. So, you can
| easily suppress unwanted detail.
| daveguy wrote:
| > No, it won't actually be strong enough to move that 3-ton
| casting even once, but you can trivially check that the
| meshing works as you expect.
|
| This is the opposite of what I have found. I wouldn't use 3D
| printed parts for any sort of interfacing / tolerance check
| because pla usually prints > 0.2mm out of spec.
|
| But, maybe you have a better 3d printer or I misunderstood
| exactly how you use it.
|
| Do you have a 3d printer that can made dimensionally accurate
| parts? Or would you mind clarifying the use case?
| genewitch wrote:
| I have one 3d printer that ca. Do dimensionally accurate
| parts as long as they're smaller than ~50mm all dimensions.
|
| With the most fine settings the slicer will do, it's within
| 20 microns in all dimensions, and usually it's so accurate
| my calipers show no error at all, which puts the error
| either under 5 microns or 1 micron, I forget.
|
| The biggest issue with PLA is it shrinks a bit, so a
| perfect print is usually about 102%ish of the drawing size;
| the slicer manages all of that, though.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| No, it's typically ~0.4mm out of tolerance.
|
| Perhaps gear meshing was a bad example requiring higher
| tolerances. You'd not be able to set the depth to a
| tolerance of a few microns, but you'd know if you were off
| by a factor of 2 due to confusion calculating diametral
| pitch vs OD.
|
| We most recently used it to check timing belt
| compatibility, whether the belt could be installed over the
| pulley using the very limited travel available in the belt
| tensioner, or whether we needed a pulley with smaller
| flanges or a different way to adjust and change belts.
| Trying to figure out in CAD whether you could stretch a
| belt over the pulley, or slip the pulley over the shaft
| while the belt was pre-installed, is pretty difficult.
| Printing it and proving that it was easy cost $2 and
| reduced risk a lot.
| tbran wrote:
| I can also confirm that shipping is calculated before the
| transaction is complete, so you'll know what you're paying.
|
| I'll add that the shipping was super fast for my most recent
| order (next day) even though part of it came from 1/3 of the
| way across the US.
| yardie wrote:
| The shipping always killed it for me. I started ordering
| fasteners through the office. It's basically the same whether
| you order an envelope or a pallet.
| [deleted]
| Certified wrote:
| "An annoyance of McMaster I didn't see enumerated is how they
| don't show you the shipping cost until after transaction is
| complete."
|
| I use McMaster daily and can see the shipping cost in two
| places when viewing my cart. The lines above the Place Order
| button on the top right side of the screen has
|
| Merchandise ####.##
|
| Shipping ##.##
|
| Total $####.##
|
| In the same bar below that is tax and directly below that you
| can click Delivery Method and it also displays the cost for
| each delivery speed. Maybe if you are set up with an account
| that is Net-30 this is hidden, but it certainly shows up for me
| when set to process the transaction by credit card.
| blamazon wrote:
| You're right and I'm wrong! There it is, plain as day. That's
| fascinating. I guess they updated this and I didn't notice.
| loeg wrote:
| It was fairly recent.
| imiric wrote:
| It's probably been discussed already, and I'm sure I'll get
| counterarguments about it, but I think having color images of
| their products wouldn't be a distraction.
|
| Sure, most of their products are black or metal, and grayscale
| works just as well in those cases, but in others, I'd like to use
| the millions of colors of my display to get a better sense of
| what I'm buying.
|
| I love everything else about the site, though.
| octagons wrote:
| This article touches on search a bit, but it doesn't quite
| capture how useful I've found its capabilities as a hobbyist.
|
| For example, I needed to replace a bent gear axle for my lathe
| during the height of supply chain issues in the past few years.
| The part was proprietary to the vendor, who did not have any
| spares on hand and was awaiting an order from their manufacturer
| in China.
|
| The top search results on McMaster for "axle" yielded both axle
| stock and pre-fabricated axles that would likely be great
| solutions in other scenarios, but ultimately neither of those
| categories contained a part that would solve my issue.
|
| However, third on the list of results was a category for "axle
| bolts", which makes sense based on my use of one of those strings
| in my search. But "axle bolts" weren't a category of things you
| can find by manually navigating the menus to barrow down your
| search. Following the link to that category actually presented
| you with a list of products under the category of "shoulder
| screws". Within these, I found a part that fit the bill for a
| temporary fix!
|
| I found it incredibly useful that it helped me navigate through
| industry terms that I wasn't familiar with. It almost seemed akin
| to Netflix's highly specific "shadow" categories such as "90s
| sitcoms with female leads" or similar.
|
| Actually (and perhaps it already can), a ChatGPT model that could
| help me design projects with specific tolerances by recommending
| parts from sources like McMaster would be very useful.
|
| For example, I want to build a simple hoist with a working
| maximum weight of 1 ton. Which grade of steel bolts should I buy
| that are most effective for that application? What thickness of
| steel square bar do I need?
|
| There are fairly straightforward ways of calculating what a
| material is capable of and modeling its performance using
| simulation software, but a passing grade doesn't tell me that my
| choice of grade 12.9 bolts is less cost effective than grade 10.9
| bolts, which are significantly cheaper.
| the_other wrote:
| As soon as the homepage rendered, I felt my whole upper body
| relax slightly. What a remarkable experience from a web site. It
| was clear, the contrast felt right, the meaning and organisation
| were plain and comfortable. Nothing interrupted me, nothing
| shouted at me.
|
| I couldn't find the screws I wanted, tho'.
| MobileVet wrote:
| Oh McMaster... how I love thee. They pioneered same day delivery
| in 2001.
|
| I worked at Idealab in Pasadena California. We ordered SO much
| from them that they would deliver to us (and others in the area)
| directly and daily. If you had your order in by 10am (11 if you
| were SUPER lucky and there were a lot of orders to process) the
| truck would show up at ~2ish. This was 2001... WAY before Amazon
| Prime 2 day deliver, let alone same day. It was EPIC to design
| something and have the parts show up hours later.
|
| The other beauty of McMaster is the breadth of their inventory.
| You could order a safety vest, a billet of Al, a 4x8 sheet of
| plywood and some screws... all from the same place! One of the
| software engineers cooked up a web scraper tied to a
| randomization engine. It would randomly order $100 worth of
| things on our account each day. He was stopped before it was
| turned on... but it would have been really fun to see what random
| stuff showed up on a daily basis. We spent a few lunches laughing
| about the potential boxes that would have shown up.
| tbran wrote:
| I used to do a lot of metalwork/fabrication in the early 2000s
| and ordered from them frequently. Even as a no-name so-and-so,
| stuff would be delivered same day or next day at the latest. It
| was amazing and they still do it!
| morelisp wrote:
| You may enjoy Amazon Random Shopper.
|
| https://randomshopper.tumblr.com/post/35454415921/randomized...
| MobileVet wrote:
| Brilliant
| steve76 wrote:
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| McMaster is the easiest web site to order from hands down. There
| is no friction.
| hedora wrote:
| It is strange that the article refers to McMaster as a B2B site.
| It works just as well for consumers.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| McMaster is definitely B2B oriented, but I think one of the
| reasons they're much loved is because they do a lot better job
| of dealing with individual consumers and small orders than a
| lot of B2B. There are sometimes annoying MOQ and sometimes high
| shipping fees (they do sell a lot of bulky/heavy/long items),
| but for the most part McMaster is still perfectly pleasant to
| deal with if you're buying a few bits and pieces for a
| household project. This really matters to me: doing some
| electrical projects, for example, there are things (like
| certain Legrand raceway) that are difficult to buy other than
| through electrical distributors that only want to deal on
| account and have a fifteen-step process to open one. McMaster
| sometimes has a good equivalent and they'll just ship me one!
| sebrindom wrote:
| The UX practices used on McMaster are most suitable for B2B
| sites.
|
| If you were trying to sell beauty products to consumers with a
| landing page like theirs it likely wouldn't perform that well.
| You could, however, draw inspiration from McMaster if your
| brand was selling the same beauty products wholesale to
| retailers.
| hedora wrote:
| If there were a beauty products web site that was organized
| that well, I'd switch to it immediately.
|
| I've spent more than 3 hours linearly searching local CVS and
| Walgreens for basic stuff in the last week, so you've touched
| a nerve!
|
| For any given product category, they now group some stuff by
| brand, then function, and other stuff by function, then
| brand.
|
| A given brand or function can be split across a half dozen
| such hierarchies. Also, they then slice the inventory by
| attractiveness to shoplifters, doubling the already
| intractable search problem. Finally, the aisles for a given
| type of product are not necessarily contiguous.
|
| Amazon actually has a landing page like the McMaster one for
| beauty products:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/b?bbn=3760911&rh=n%3A3760911&dc&qid=1.
| ..
|
| Except it is broken:
|
| - It displays "featured categories" which can be expanded
| with "show more", but there is no "show all categories"
| button.
|
| - The first screen is spam, the second screen is content.
| More spam (== algoritmic suggestions not based on intent)
| until roughly screen 10,
|
| - At that point, there is a helpful "filter hair care by
| ethnicity" table. Since this is their second most important
| flow (apparently), let's focus on it.
|
| Back on screen two, tapping "hair care" drills down to hair
| products, but there is no ethnicity filter. Why even have an
| ethnicity grouping (and waste scarce landing page space on
| it) if it is not discoverable by people shopping for hair
| care? Also, how do you filter skin care, cosmetics, etc by
| ethnicity?
|
| What about other facets, such as medical issues (e.g.,
| sensitive skin or allergic to fragrances)?
| unglaublich wrote:
| > It works just as well for consumers.
|
| That is not what it means to be B2B or B2C.
|
| B2C: optimize profit from consumers.
|
| B2B: optimize profit from businesses.
|
| A B2C store has flashy 'modern' design, sparse text, ads, a
| blog, logos, customer reviews, pay-later options, a wish list,
| discount codes, a newsletter sign-up, up-sells during checkout,
| etc.
|
| Business consumers find that revolting, so it won't work for
| them. Consumers on the other hand are easily tempted with
| 'discounts' and 'up-sells'.
| NegativeK wrote:
| It works pretty well for consumers, but McMaster is 100% aimed
| at MRO/B2B. The couple of complaint comments here in this
| thread make it pretty clear that people don't know that, and
| are blaming the website for business choices that have made
| McMaster as dominant as they are.
| zeusk wrote:
| I wouldn't say so, I had to purchase the min qty. of 200 for a
| screw set I could only find on there that was available in
| reasonable time.
|
| I made use of 4 and have 196 left over
| sokoloff wrote:
| It sounds like it worked for you, at least better than all
| other options that you had.
| roflyear wrote:
| Meh you can't exactly get one deck screw at home Depot.
| trey-jones wrote:
| This might fit into edge cases. I've used McMaster-Carr as a
| consumer many times, and though I might get a discount if I
| bought a minimum quantity, I've been able to purchase what I
| needed in singles each time. I doubt if there's an e-commerce
| site out there that will let you purchase and ship 4 screws
| for less than what you would pay for 200. Even at brick and
| mortar hardware stores you're ripping yourself off by buying
| 50 screws instead of 200 (or 1000). I get that you don't need
| them all but the price per unit is still astronomical.
| hedora wrote:
| I bought a bunch of defective keg o-rings that waste CO2 and
| emptied a keg on to the floor over night (looking at you:
| More Beer!). For the price of one retail kit, I put together
| 10 rebuild kits worth of o-rings at McMaster. In that case (5
| hours of researching which $0.05 o-ring to buy), the minimum
| quantity was more a feature than a bug.
|
| I can understand the annoyance for non consumables, like
| screws.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Would be nice if it had better support for metric. Or even just
| to set everything to fractional inches. When I'm just looking for
| a metal bar, I hate having to work out how much bigger 13/64" is
| than 0.200", and how much bigger that is than 5 mm.
| shadeslayer_ wrote:
| Funny thing is that the site doesn't even work right now. Kiss of
| death and all that..
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I hate how you can't command click on a link to open a page in a
| new tab. I do this all the time when comparing products on other
| sites since it makes it easy to switch back and forth between two
| similar products. This workflow is completely broken on
| McMaster's site.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| I agree that's a nuisance. One of the few problems on that
| site. On the Mac I use the StopTheMadness extension to kill
| that click hijacking. McMaster's site works fine now.
| StayTrue wrote:
| The best e-commerce site would not insert a redirect when
| arriving via Google search results (which breaks the back
| button).
| StayTrue wrote:
| I'll accept the downvotes and say it's not a universal problem.
| Upon more research it seems if you do not send a Referrer
| header, McMaster inserts a history entry using the history API.
| I can make it work/fail by tweaking
| network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy. It's interesting that
| McMaster is the only site I use in 2022 that has a problem with
| it.
| sokoloff wrote:
| What search term did you use? I just tried "mcmaster 4-40
| screw", clicked on the first link, clicked on the back button,
| and was back at the Google SERP.
| hedora wrote:
| I can't reproduce this in Firefox with Duck Duck Go or Google.
|
| Could you have clicked a (malicious?) Ad Sense ad?
| StayTrue wrote:
| Not sure what's going on. I can reproduce in Firefox with DDG
| and Google.
|
| Edit: it only happens for me in Firefox with particularly
| locked down settings. It turns out McMaster is not actually
| inserting a 3XX redirect, it is happening via the history
| API.
|
| As I updated elsewhere: upon more research it seems if you do
| not send a Referrer header, McMaster inserts a history entry
| using the history API. I can make it work/fail by tweaking
| Firefox network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy. It's interesting
| that McMaster is the only site I use in 2022 that has a
| problem with it.
| simonlc wrote:
| It also doesn't ship world wide, even to Canada I made an
| order, with no way to see what shipping was and got an email
| saying they only ship to commercial or schools. That's a
| terrible e-commerce experience. Sites like NCIX were way better
| than this.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| 10+ years ago they used to ship to individuals in Canada, but
| I vaguely remember some negative word-of-mouth discussions
| about them when individuals got burned by "customs fees"
| which was actually companies like UPS ripping off people by
| charging unreasonable fees to do customs clearance paperwork.
| Mcmaster probably didn't want to deal with that.
|
| If they do think you're a business (maybe this means someone
| at your business has ordered before), they will not only ship
| to you but instantly let you use net-30 payment terms
| automatically. I had one experience of ordering some parts to
| a university in Japan when I was a student, and the parts
| were shipped the same day, along with an invoice. I didn't
| even have to create a login. [0]
|
| [0] I wouldn't be surprised if this is no longer true due to
| know-your-customer legislation.
| trakout wrote:
| NCIX doesn't seem to be shipping to anyone these days
| 10xDev wrote:
| Sure, when you are a supplier of tools this is a great example.
| However, to point this as a shining example for all eCommerce
| sites is simply misunderstanding the difference in target
| audiences and products. For example, a person may visit a site
| looking for a gift. To such a customer it helps to have images
| and bold titles tell them why a product is worth their attention
| and money. Apple goes as far to lay out its specs in a long
| presentation with animated 3D models because their customer may
| not even understand what all the specs mean or just find it
| tedious and move on to see what Google has. One size does not fit
| all.
| mihaic wrote:
| I always see McMaster-Carr praised on HN, but almost never does
| it seem to be acknowledged as website that can only exist for
| engineers.
|
| Generalizing anything from it onto the general internet
| population seems like thinking about education starting from a
| great calculus course: some useful lessons can be learned, but
| you do need to acknowledge that the average problem is very
| different.
|
| And in the end we're left with: make a fast website, clean UI,
| intuitive flows.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I disagree. Yes, the specific website is for engineers and
| manufacturing businesses, but everything discussed here and in
| the article applies just as much to any e-commerce store. The
| core idea is: the store doesn't waste your time.
|
| > _And in the end we 're left with: make a fast website, clean
| UI, intuitive flows._
|
| That is what almost all e-commerce platforms fail at, on top of
| abusive, adversarial design.
| tobinfekkes wrote:
| This is more of a lead-gen ad for Medusa, tagging on the back of
| a deservedly-popular HN article.
|
| The dissonance of this juxtaposition is comical. Are we going to
| ignore the elephant in the room? That Medusa's very own site, and
| the stores built with it, are the exact opposite of McMaster.com?
| If you started with Medusa, you wouldn't end up with
| McMaster.com. McMaster.com is as good as it is because it doesn't
| use the latest flavor of a bloated JS framework.
|
| The points made in the article (they have a search bar at the
| top, they have sidebar....on the side, a cart page, a checkout
| page) are basic ecommerce, and have been for 20+ years. That's
| not what differentiates McMaster.
|
| This comes off as a poor attempt to jump on the McMaster news
| cycle than to actually point out things that make it good.
|
| It's their service, their longevity, their dependability, the
| simplicity, the availability, and the specificity that make it
| good. They're not good because of their ecommerce and web design
| choices. Their ecommerce and web design are good because they
| didn't jump on the latest tech fad every other year for the past
| 10 years.
| jameshart wrote:
| Just... astounded that the starting point for a discussion of
| e-commerce usability would ever be 'let's go gather some
| learnings from "a B2B site that recently made the top of
| HackerNews as the best e-commerce site"'
|
| Are HN users even representative customers of McMaster Carr? Let
| alone of any other e-commerce site?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Are HN users even representative customers of McMaster Carr?
| Let alone of any other e-commerce site?_
|
| Why wouldn't they be? Yes, most HN users have some expertise or
| occupation in tech, or tech-adjacent fields, but other than
| that, HN has a diverse userbase from all around the world and
| great many walks of life.
| jameshart wrote:
| Sure, some HN users are going to be McMaster Carr users. Some
| HN users are probably Boeing customers as well, but I
| wouldn't trust HN's collective assessment of the procurement
| UX for a 787. The users who McMaster Carr is targeting
| _peripherally intersect_ with the HN community. And it also
| happens to be a community that contains people who are more
| likely than the average population to enjoy browsing a parts
| catalog for fun.
|
| I just don't know how much you can conclude generally about
| effective e-commerce design from that sample point.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| They wouldn't be because HN is a self-selected sample of
| people who tend to have tech experience, which tends to lend
| itself to certain ways of thinking.
|
| If an ecommerce site depended entirely on looking through
| their catalog with SQL commands, I'd imagine most of the HN
| community would be able to navigate it (although possibly
| unhappy with it). I'd imagine most of the general population
| would not be.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Fair enough.
|
| > _If an ecommerce site depended entirely on looking
| through their catalog with SQL commands, I 'd imagine most
| of the HN community would be able to navigate it (although
| possibly unhappy with it)._
|
| I would love it, and I would switch to that site
| immediately.
|
| Every time I have to shop for something on-line these days
| I'm thinking about making a scrapper populating an SQLite
| database with that site's catalog, because e-commerce UX is
| insanely bad, and even a simple SQL database browser would
| be an order of magnitude of improvement.
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