Fast, snappy, responsive. No banners or cookie prompts, doesn't ask my to sign up for a newsletter or an account to continue and see more selection, it doesn't load in megabytes of JavaScript to show me products.
Plus, responsive as all heck, and there isn't any bullshit prompts like "click here to see our selected offerings" or "check out our value products here" Like, from. The short url, I'm already looking at the products.
It was just as good 15 years ago too! And it’s probably not true not but it used to be the least possible friction to order things. Even if you weren’t logged in, if ordering from a company premise it would just confirm the address and let you order and send you a bill later.
This feature RIGHT HERE is probably what lends to McMaster’s retention. No futzing around with account numbers, customer IDs, etc. Nope. Just a real accounting department talking to your company’s accounting department. Onboarding 20 new engineers today? No problem, just tell them to make an account with the company email and fill out the billing info with accounts payable and the finance guys will take care of all the rest.
McMaster honestly is such a gem of a company. Quadruply so if you so happen to live within the same-day delivery distance of one of their regional centers. Then McMaster turns into a super power.
Only downside is that McMaster fails some more rigorous sniff tests on part traceability/quality/reliability for certain kinds of engineering orgs but honestly so much manufacturing is held together by the glue of McMaster.
And if in the odd case they ever fail to deliver, there’s always Grainger!
Might benefit from an image search feature.
Am noob DIYer. I often only have a vague sense of what I'm looking for. Usually by analogy. So I'll spend a lot of time both foraging as well as using any search term I can think of.
eg Most recently, I'm looking for "banker's clips", my SO's term for really long money clip looking things. Like sewing hemming clips, but wider, and with a finished edge (non sharp). Great for securing paper to backing boards. So artists can carry around their work.
Also the banner is easily dismissed, and doesn't come back when you revisit the site.
And the website wasn't designed for mobile at all.
1. It responds to your actions. Click stuff and it does that and does it quickly.
2. It gives you a different response based on which device you are using. You log on with a mobile device, it gives you a screen suited to mobile.
It doesn't do the latter. I'm on a phone. It might resize screens on a desktop, but doesn't do it for a phone.
Having all the options and important specs laid out on one giant page lets you discover blind spots in your thinking. Need an tube adapter for a fluid systems? Open up that page and as your scrolling through, discover that you forgot to think about the pitch of threading when you find the size and psi rating adapter you were looking for comes in several thread pitch options. Not sure which? Open up the handy explainer at the top of the page that explains to you the different options available and what they mean.
McMaster is primarily a B2B tool whose goal is to facilitate their users finding what they need, buying it, and building in a manner that is fast, convenient, and informative.
McMaster is a masterclass in UX and understanding what is really important to their business model, and resisting the urge to switch to trendy, sleek designs simply because it looks prettier.