Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't go into the actual mechanics of finalizing your order, which is incredibly well done. I've only actually ordered from McMaster 3 times and don't have a need for anything right now so I might be getting details wrong, but basically, the "items in your cart" page has a shipping address and payment method pre-filled, and you just hit "order" and that's it. What's in stock, what ships when, etc. is all clearly labeled in each line item. There are number entry boxes to adjust quantities. You can put in your own part numbers, of course, and the items in the shipment will be labeled with that (or at least a reference to the line item on your invoice). First time I bought from them, I was blown away how clean and easy it was. You hear "industrial supply" and think the ordering process is going to end with "ok, now call us for a quote", but it's smoother than Amazon. Well done.

I also like their parametric search. If you type '1/4"-20 screw', the page goes to the overview of that screw type AND populates the "machine-readable" parameters on the left side with what you typed. It's wonderful. I also appreciate that their search term tokenizer understands that you're looking for a thread size ('1/4"-20') and doesn't strip the non-alphanumeric characters like most would. (Amazon has gotten better at this over the years. I wanted to say "look at those idiots, giving you any screw that has the number 1, 4, or 20 in the description", but they bring up the parameterization as well.)

Finally, McMaster has a reputation for being pricey, but sometimes you just pay the same price that everyone pays for something. For example, say you want a set of Mitutoyo 4" digital calipers. On Amazon, which is rife with counterfeit knockoffs, you'll pay $136.94. On McMaster, you'll pay $129.19 (plus shipping, yeah I know). And it won't be counterfeit! As always, shop around, but they are not trying to screw you on price, or by subbing in counterfeit trash to make a few bucks. Truly a marvel of online shopping. I wish they sold everything.

> I also like their parametric search. If you type '1/4"-20 screw', the page goes to the overview of that screw type AND populates the "machine-readable" parameters on the left side with what you typed.

This is something I wish more e-commerce sites would grok. I go to Lowes and type in

    1/2" 10-32 stainless bolt

in the search box. Now I get a search result page, with filter parameters on the left side. Great. There's a checkbox that says "Stainless steel". Oh oh! What do I do now? Aren't the results already all stainless steel? I specified it in the goddamn search. If I select the checkbox, will I be filtering out things I want? Can I click the checkbox and remove "stainless" word from my search query and get more things I want? (hint: not usually). Why do I have different choices for screw thickness and thread pitch when I specified them, too? Come on, e-commerce developer-wizards, get your shit together!

Same for you, Amazon! "64GB sd card" and then Amazon's filter lets me further drill down... by capacity. DUHH, I specified the capacity! How can Amazon operate for almost 30 years and still not have this one figured out?

Amazon is shockingly bad at parametric searches. Products are routinely miscategorized, often ridiculously so, and frequently have missing or woefully inaccurate parameters (like treating a bundle of four 16 GB SD cards as "64 GB").

Even when Amazon's product parameters are correct, their filters are frequently outdated -- for example, their category for "internal hard drives" has a single filter for "4 TB & Above", even though capacities as high as 20 TB are available. They also have a filter for 1500 RPM (not 15k!) drives, which I'm pretty sure have been out of production for longer than Amazon has sold hard disks.

That's because labeling items with attributes and filling them correctly is manual work on behalf of a multitude of 3rd party sellers.

Some of them do a decent job, most don't. There are also incentives to completely ignore parametric search and throw as many ads at the customer as possible instead of relevant results.

I wanted to show up with an argument about how third-party sellers were lazy, but I think Amazon can fix this if they want to. If typing "4GB SD card" is parsed by their search engine into "select * from items where storage_capacity='4GB' and product='SD card'", then sellers that don't update their metadata simply won't sell another card ever again. As a result, they will instantly update their data and make sure it's correct. (I suppose "make sure it's correct" is where the plan becomes less clear, given how many fake drives there already are on Amazon. I guess they can figure that out with return rates, but by then a lot of fossil fuels have been squandered and a lot of time has elapsed.)

The 3rd party sellers are penalized already to some degree, and Amazon has begun suspending certain listings (you can still buy them if you have the direct link, they just won't appear in search) for missing certain attributes.

But IMO, it's not enough in some categories. Especially where item parameters and specs are critical for its interoperability and functionality.

Ecommerce filtering for electronics generally is terrible. I even made a hobby website for used electronics, specifically inspired by the precise parametric search we expect from McMaster and Digikey etc

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