I don't know. Fangamer and a few other small inventory sites work remarkably well for me, as well.
Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
11–20 of 175 posts
Re: Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
#12It is strange that the article refers to McMaster as a B2B site. It works just as well for consumers.
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.
Re: Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
#13It is strange that the article refers to McMaster as a B2B site. It works just as well for consumers.
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
It sounds like it worked for you, at least better than all other options that you had.
Re: Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
#14It is strange that the article refers to McMaster as a B2B site. It works just as well for consumers.
> 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'.
Re: Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
#15Does 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.
Re: Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
#16There'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.
Re: Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
#17A 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…
I've heard you can contact support to get a shipping quote before placing your order.
Re: Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
#18mcmaster, rockauto, digikey, ... don't tell anyone, they'll "modernise" them and fuck it all up.
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.
Re: Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
#19I 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…
Re: Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com
#20The best e-commerce site would not insert a redirect when arriving via Google search results (which breaks the back button).
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.