McMaster-Carr: A refreshingly fast, thoughtful, and well-organized website | Hacker News Reader

McMaster-Carr: A refreshingly fast, thoughtful, and well-organized website

mcmaster.com

102 pointsjer0me36 comments

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24803857

Some things I noticed:

  - Sidebar text leading adjusts with window height
  - Blazing-fast search
  - Table rows highlight on hover
  - Unwavering commitment to grayscale images which make scanning easier (https://www.mcmaster.com/snacks/)
  - No tracking scripts (per uBlock Origin)

This is user experience design in its highest form, born out of an intimate understanding of the target customer. Very nice to see it showcased here.

The lack of tracking scripts is telling. Adding them would clearly be detrimental to performance, and it’s dubious whether any insights could be so obtained. Always good to remember that observation changes the thing observed.

> - Complete commitment to grayscale images which make scanning easier (https://www.mcmaster.com/snacks/)

Liars: https://www.mcmaster.com/product/3542N11

(I'm pretty sure that's an oversight but the fact that I have to dig hard just to find this is funny)

Ok, very funny. Two comments:

1. Oh dear, they are not RoHS compliant.

2. Where’s the CAD model?

ah, is that the reason for this line?

Cannot Be Sold To: Canada

Most clothing is in colour (just not the categories) https://www.mcmaster.com/clothing/

Also (inconsistently) other objects where it might matter https://www.mcmaster.com/high-visibility/

I will say, one thing I do wish it had was the ability to configure the test size. Everything is so tiny and I feel like I have to squint.

I wonder how they arrived at default 10.5pt font.

command or control + in your browser takes care of that.

More recently

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34000502 a month ago, 167 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32976978 4 months ago, 490 comments

Hell yeah, preach. Mcmaster is great for both personal and professional usage. So much nostalgia around their huge physical catalog book, but hey that's what the website is replacing (would assume you can still get the catalog in print though)

edit: and the website has cad files for basically every part

Still in print as far as I know. These days the physical catalog is very difficult to get from McMaster. They probably make them in very low quantities and hand select who gets them, maybe based on lifetime spend / org size, or so I’ve heard.

Somebody should send their whole website product team Christmas gifts for making a website that doesn't suck. It's really rare these days. Thanks web peeps. <3

I agree with the sentiment expressed in the title, though am pretty confused. This just seems to be the McMaster-Carr homepage? I was expecting an article or blog post analysis of the UX and why it's "thoughtful and well-organized."

That's just it. No blog necessary. Just use the site. It's amazing.

Do they have have an IKEA like storefront anywhere? I'd pay for a solid day pass to fiddle with all the different cable ties.

Practical application of Tufte's Small Multiples pattern https://infovis-wiki.net/wiki/Small_Multiples

A love letter to the McMaster-Carr catalog: https://masterlist.co/

Cool, stop. Third fucking time this year. We get it

The beatings with McMaster-Carr will continue until the UI/UX people get the message and website usability improves.

Great site if you know exactly what you need, but a lot of this information hierarchy won't work for those just browsing or looking for inspiration.

That's the right choice for this site and what I expect it's users want, but not something that every ecommerce site should be aspiring to.

Having built an ecommerce site where the primary use-case was not a specialist who knows exactly what they want, I'd suggest that this is probably the easier type. In my experience, building a rigid hierarchy is the easy part, and building a site around that is straightforward. Add in a user preference of ease of use over looking good, and this isn't a particularly hard problem to solve.

The issue gets harder when categories are subjective, when there are many similar products, when relationships between products are subjective, when browsing, and providing relevant and interesting onward journeys at each step are important for a good user experience, and when design and branding are important for brand trust.

It's easy to be dismissive of the effect of branding, or to say that websites shouldn't be optimising for engagement, but in markets such as fashion, these are critically important to the user experience and perception, and ultimately user satisfaction from the products, and are not just about the bottom line of the business.

tldr: don't apply this all blindly, it's good but relevance depends on the store.

Having used McMaster Carr several times with not a clue as to the correct search terms, I must disagree with your assertion that the site only caters to those who know what they are looking for.

Vague search terms will give you results more reasonable than I would expect. Every product category and refinable search field has a useful description to help you figure out what you want to search for and how to refine your search.

Additionally, broad searches show multiple categories so that you can quickly figure out what categories are even available to start from.

Granted, if you do not know what to search for at first, it will take several iterations and some reading to get there, but the critical part is that you can.

When I have used McMaster Carr, my experience starting from ignorance has been better than all other e-commerce sites I have used, even when I know what I am looking for on those other sites. The only exception is when I have an exact brand and model I want.

I think there's a difference between looking for a thing to solve a specific problem without knowing what it is or the right search terms, and not looking for anything specific at all.

To be more concrete, the former might be "my sink is leaking and I need a washer or nut or something for this pipe joint, but I don't know what they're called", vs "I want a more preppy look for a party this weekend".

The former has a correct answer, the customer may just not know exactly how to ask for it. The latter is not just subjective in the search terms, but subjective in the solution to the actual problem, and could take many forms, across many categories, including several at once.

I’ve found it pretty great for the things I’ve needed from them. It’s a lot better for finding the stuff you need than having to click in to multiple listings on say Amazon

Sure, but my point is that the UX doesn't just lift and shift to any other ecommerce site. Some of this would work for some categories on Amazon, but in my experience in Fashion ecommerce, this sort of site performs poorly.

It's important to understand WHY the site is like this, and WHO it's designing for, and then to understand if or how that applies to other sites.

Just wait until you see rockauto.com

> rockauto.com

Woah, that has a part for my campervan that I'd never seen sold before or even installed on a similar vehicle!

It is a hook step for getting into the front doors. Not even expensive. Nice!

From a clean cache, rockauto.com takes a good 5 seconds to fully load on my machine. mcmaster.com is under a second.

Buttttt, it doesn't render as quickly as a React app would.. Think about the DOM! It also probably mutates state, how dare they!

This is proof that if hipster JS programmers disappeared tomorrow the web would flourish once again.

It's too late. Browser makers and hipster JS programmers signed a pact with Satan to keep making the web worse in exchange for job security through unnecessary complexity.

Hate to be that guy but "You need to enable JavaScript to run this app."

Yeah, it's not so nice once you browse past the landing page. You also have to enable cookies, or you'll get stuck looking at a pinwheel.

Ok, I guess I will be the party pooper this HN post. McMaster broke middle-click opening of drill-down links in tabs in their most recent complete UX rewrite some years ago. The old site was even better.

Okay I love the site but we've gotten a lot of these posts. Karma farming?

It's clean and fast, and completely useless as a store.

Can't even estimate shipping & tax without creating an account.

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