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Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

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Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#271

Post by thrown_22 »

Mistletoe wrote: post #122
iancmceachern wrote: post #34

Mechanical Engineer and product designer here. I've been using mcmaster daily for 20 years to do my job. It is definitely the standard by which all others are judged. 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. As an example of the level of their service, you can send them a box of loose parts, no part numbers, no markings, and the…

Maybe your customers or employer would like you to save 2, 3, 5, 10x the price… My memories of McMaster from doing my hobbies is that it is outrageously expensive.

You are, people ignore how much their time costs when they start "saving" money all the time.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#272

Post by jwr »

iancmceachern wrote: post #34

Mechanical Engineer and product designer here. I've been using mcmaster daily for 20 years to do my job. It is definitely the standard by which all others are judged. 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. As an example of the level of their service, you can send them a box of loose parts, no part numbers, no markings, and the…

Alas, for some reason they only cater to the US market and have no presence in the EU, for example. So while it is possible to order from them, it's rather inconvenient as you need to deal with customs/taxes.

Digi-Key got this right: you can order DDP, which makes things quick & simple.

Incidentally, I am amazed that they don't have a meaningful competitor in the EU. It seems most companies here are stuck in the 80s and dedicate next to zero effort to their web ordering process.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#273

Post by antisthenes »

duskwuff wrote: post #185
ryandrake wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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",…

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.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#274

Post by Someone »

ISL wrote: post #93
xen2xen1 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell me there's a story behind an "industrial tricycle?"

It has come up when we've played the "McMaster Game" at our office, in which we attempt to guess random things that McMaster might or might not have. Interesting things they have had in the past include basketball hoops (in a kit, ready to go, for all your "our institution needs a basketball court... today" needs) and a urinal. But yes, there are real uses for industrial tricycles -- need to move some stuff (or a per…

> Interesting things they have had in the past include basketball hoops

They still have them: https://www.mcmaster.com/basketball-hoops/

Don’t buy their basketballs, though. They aren’t RoHS or REACH compliant (https://www.mcmaster.com/45425T23/)

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#275

Post by hoseja »

When you target the general population, it's sadly more profitable to design for exploitable, manipulateable, lowest common denominator. You can only have nice things if your consumer base isn't generally morons and you are therefore somewhat protected from predation by unscrupulous companies.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#276

Post by gnrlst »

hoseja wrote: post #275

When you target the general population, it's sadly more profitable to design for exploitable, manipulateable, lowest common denominator. You can only have nice things if your consumer base isn't generally morons and you are therefore somewhat protected from predation by unscrupulous companies.

The world would be a slightly better place if everyone had some form of engineering background. Not necessarily software nor mechanical, just an inkling of making things more efficient, more logical, and more usable.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#277

Post by mrweasel »

CreepGin wrote: post #181

Just curious, are images intentionally all grayscale? Or just a legacy thing.

I didn't know about mcmaster.com, but I took a look at it, and the images was a surprise. The uniformity of the product images is nothing sort of amazing.

Most websites don't care to much about illustrations, even though that's what many people use when buying. Taking your own photos, or doing illustrations is pretty expensive, but it really helps the customers pick the right products.

The grayscale may be a way of insuring that customers aren't overly focused on the illustrations, and instead actually read the product descriptions.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#279

Post by oriolid »

elil17 wrote: post #195
wlesieutre wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a good place for well priced bolts if I'm not worried about next day shipping but need them to not be made of pot metal?

Where are you finding pot metal bolts? Your best option should be anything from Ace/Home Depot/Lowes. The matte finish ones are zinc galvanized, that’s just the protective coating. They are made of carbon steel and are graded according to standards set by organizations like SAE. Hardware stores will have grade 2 bolts for the most part (or the metric equivalents). These will be made with weaker steel and will be cut…

> Where are you finding pot metal bolts?

Self-assembled furniture seems to have terrible bolts more often than not. Instrument stands and drum kits also come with softest imaginable bolts except the most expensive gear. I'm sure there are other products like this.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#280

Post by lbriner »

a-dub wrote: post #16

digikey, jameco, mcmaster, ingram... most of these online catalog parts houses have excellently functional websites. but like, even back in the day distribution warehouses had excellent terminal based inventory search and ordering interfaces over packet switched networks. anyone remember datanet?

"Functional websites" is not what we are discussing here, but amazing websites.

I've seen a carparts store online and it had something really similar, a few words like "oil filter 2017 ford mustang" and you were literally looking at the part in the dropdown list, exactly what you want.

What do most sites do wrong?

1) Not loading the search data into RAM on the server so it is really fast - most companies could do this with their level of stock and only need a couple of GB per web server 2) Requiring a postback to start filtering 3) Not allowing the ordering of search terms to be changed e.g. "Ford Mustang Oil Filter" should match the same as "Oil Filter Ford Mustang" 4) Not having images for all results 5) Not being able to zoom in on images to check something is what you think it is 6) Using a stock image which doesn't necessarily match the item

For companies whose primary interface with the public is searching for stuff, most e-commerce sites I use are shamefully bad at both performance and usability.

Kudos to Mcmaster!

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