[forgotpasswd3x]

I think that www vs. no-www, as a matter of "putting the customer first" is so INCREDIBLY insignificant, compared to the thousands of other decisions that go into a product, that it's ridiculous we're even having this conversation. This is looking for optimization in the wrong places at its finest.

[lkrubner]

Do you a think a user should have to write:

http://www.apple.com:80/

or:

http://www.apple.com/

Ever since the first web browsers, way back in the early 1990s, it has been commonplace to leave out the port number. The web browser adds it automatically.

Similar logic would lead us to leave off the "http". And similar logic would lead us to leave off the "www". The trend has been to simplify the URL as much as possible.

[ldjb]

Nobody is suggesting the user should be forced to type in the protocol, the subdomain, or the port number. If the user types in:

apple.com

It should lead to where the user wants to go.

However, there are good reasons for using the www subdomain as the canonical URL, and it is also worth noting that some users will habitually type in www anyway.

If you don't want to include the subdomain in marketing material, then there's nothing stopping you from leaving it out, just as there's nothing stopping you from leaving out the protocol.

[geofft]

From the article:

Should I redirect no-www to www?

Yes.

Redirection ensures that visitors who type in your URL reach you regardless of which form they use, and also ensures that search engines index your canonical URLs properly.

So I don't think you're advocating anything they don't.

[devishard]

Your argument that eliding the www is better for users is logical, but you failed to make any argument whatsoever that it is significant. Given that you were responding to a statement that the difference isn't significant, you're basically attacking a straw man.

[brownbat]

> www vs. no-www, as a matter of "putting the customer first" is so INCREDIBLY insignificant

I don't know, I've always been fascinated by the premium of domains that are just one character shorter, and all of the startups that exclude a vowel to get a compressed (or maybe just available) name. That could reflect actual user preferences.

UX theorists convinced me over the last decade that user behavior is shaped by tiny moments and irritations that we think are insignificant at first glance. A few 100 ms extra in delays may seem barely perceptible, but they can kill a site. It's not implausible that a few extra keystrokes could do the same.[0]

On the other hand, redirects seem like a happy medium, so long as they're fast enough. nasa.gov uses a redirect, that seems fine. Note that they were driven to that (from 'www'-only) after confused fans kept writing in to complain that "http://nasa.gov" was a dead end and that they didn't "even know the basics of running a website."[1]

[0] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/response-times-3-important-... N.B.: In that link, Jakob Nielsen recommended making "www" optional through redirects. It's been a while, so not sure his current thoughts, but the same reasons would apply today. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/compound-domain-names/

[1] https://blogs.nasa.gov/nasadotgov/2011/05/31/post_1306860816... NASA's case provides a real example of something Jakob Nielsen pointed out in the first link: usability is a slave to expectations. So if enough popular sites are using naked domains, and your naked domain just 404s, some users will dismiss your site as unreliable.

[baby]

I was going to write the exact same thing as you. But then I thought about Chrome removing "http://" to avoid displaying useless and dense information to the user. What about www?

[LeoPanthera]

That would be misleading as example.com and www.example.com are not guaranteed to be the same site.

[saurik]

Apple actually does this on the iPhone.

[x5n1]

A redirect is also completely invisible to the user, and should only add a few microseconds to the page load. But you should always redirect www. if you are not using www. Many people instinctively type that into the address bar when you tell them a domain name.

[jjoonathan]

A few microseconds, huh? I decided to do some experiments. Here's how long some 301s on common sites took:

    google.com:    529ms
    apple.com:     261ms
    microsoft.com: 142ms
    reddit.com:     61ms

Which is not only 100,000 times longer than a few microseconds but more importantly well above the perception threshold.

[manigandham]

microseconds? That's definitely not the case. It takes 10s of milliseconds just to leave your internet router on busy wifi home networks. A 301 redirect is an extra network roundtrip for no gain and much more (perceived) latency.

[codeddesign]

that is actually false. The majority of people no longer type in www. For example, in the last 10 years branding has completely remove the www and so likewise user reaction has followed suit. Unless you are targeting an older crowd, the vast majority ignore www on a search. With chrome being the major browser now and with browsers allowing search from the address bar, lookup without www is pretty much standard - again assuming your users are in a class of under 35 years of age.