[TreeInBuxton]

> Do people still type "www."?

From my experience, yes.

I am getting merried next month - we have a wedding website via "with joy", which had a URL a bit too long to fit on our wedding invites, so I set up a redirect of "wedding.surname.tld" - the amount of people who messaged us saying the website didn't work, and it turns out they were putting "www." beforehand was staggering (until I added that as a redirect too).

[lostlogin]

If you are ever in a tech support role and have to see how people use computers, it’s actually horrific.

[passwordoops]

I think anyone working UX should spend 3-6 months minimum in tech support every couple of years. I imagine the value of those learnings would vastly outweigh any useability studies or testing.

[vxNsr]

I have an email that is [e-mail] when I tell it to people, or tech support they always first assume I’m an idiot and really meant to say [e-mail]

The tld isn’t com there’s no g in the entire address, but people have a hard time understanding that such a thing is a real email address. I do happen to have that gmail address also, but my name is uncommon and not the easiest to spell, so as long as they get my last name and tld right I’ll get the email if they send it to my vanity domain.

[rvba]

In Kiwi browser (which after my tests seems to be the best Android browser: chome but with good / old way to scroll cards + ublock) you can make a personalized tab with links to pages. When you try to add a new page it auto suggests http adress - not httpS. So dont blame it always on users :)

[treesknees]

Similar thing happened to us. I had the www redirect but used a .wedding TLD. On the invites I even put the entire “http://<domain>.wedding/“ hoping it’d be clear. I’d say a majority of people didn’t recognize that it was a web address and assumed we didn’t have a website.

[actionfromafar]

To be fair “.com” would probably have convinced more of them.

“.wedding” is obviously some cheeky made up thing…

[stuff4ben]

not https?

[washadjeffmad]

I suppose that could also be an indication that they haven't typed in a URL in a very long time.

A shocking (to me) number of people I work with don't know the URLs of websites they visit every day or that they can go directly to a site by typing in the address in "the search bar". And I mean people who use their computers for a living, not the "smartphone generation" or strangers to the web.

[inversetelecine]

Indeed.

Me: Hey checkout <website>.com

Them: type <website> without .com in address bar, click on search results link that may or may not be correct.

[VHRanger]

In cases like this I'd just make a QR code of the url

[AlecSchueler]

Then your tech support simply changes to guiding people in the use of QR codes.

[Angostura]

having www. is a nice quixk way of saying "this is a website address" without having to say it.