McMaster Carr – The Smartest Website You Haven't Heard Of (2022)

[NaOH]

Previous and related:

how come a company founded over 100 years ago has the fastest site - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41883419 - Oct 2024 (15 comments)

McMaster-Carr: A refreshingly fast, thoughtful, and well-organized website - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34306793 - Jan 2023 (37 comments)

Best ecommerce UX practices from mcmaster.com - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34000502 - Dec 2022 (169 comments)

Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32976978 - Sept 2022 (494 comments)

McMaster-Carr: Beautifully organized and informational industrial product store - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24803857 - Oct 2020 (27 comments)

[webdevver]

lol for real. weve heard about it quite a lot, actually - infact not a year goes by without someone rediscovering that html can load quite quickly if given the chance.

[theandrewbailey]

Back when this was making the rounds several years ago, I was intrigued that they request pages in the background on mouse-over, then swap on click. I decided to do similar on my blog, since my pages are about a dozen kb of HTML, and I aggressively cache things. My blog now feels super fast to navigate through, since I've eliminated a ton of network lag.

https://theandrewbailey.com/

[nirava]

wow it is really fast!

[fsh]

Built with asp.net and jQuery. Nowadays, it would probably be some React monstrosity that takes 30s to load and only shows one item per page (when did information density become evil?).

[dchest]

https://github.com/stratolark/NextMaster

[pjfin123]

I've been doing more and more web dev with JQuery recently. I learned it in high school and I think most of the new JS frameworks are probably worse.

[aitchnyu]

The UX wizards ensure your phone and 32-inch show upto 6 products so customers dont face too much info. A goal-oriented (vs browsing) app wont have whitespace or infinite scroll.

[tjpnz]

I think there's also some Yahoo UI in there too.

[jacquesm]

Note they have CAD files for almost all of their products which - in combination with a 3D printer - can come in very handy.

[throwawaymobule]

This makes great business sense, since you can fit-test any part and know you're getting the right one before ordering.

IIRC, there's even plugins for some CAD programs to grab models by part number.

[georgefrowny]

And they download directly as files, not wrapped in a zip that you have to mess around with before you can put the actual file you need where you want it.

[bdcravens]

Fusion 360 integrates this, letting you include their products in your designs/assemblies.

[IAmBroom]

I was there, Gandalf, thirty years ago when they formed their first website...

Which was little more than scans of their catalog pages, and some fields. Really. Instead of getting all excited about the latest web tech, they took their gigantic catalog and more-or-less scanned it in (well, used source files, but still...).

McMaster-Carr has always been an amazing company. I was once in the field, and ordered a $5,000 part from a key supplier and a $30 box of screws from McMaster-Carr. The other supplier charged extra for shipping, and sent it two days later to my company instead of my location as specified. McMaster-Carr overnighted the screws without being asked to do so.

[serf]

i'm old enough to have a few of the old McMaster-Carr yellow/green books on a shelf which came before the CD-Rom catalog which got disappeared by the website.

I wonder if the source images were from the cd-rom?

[SirFatty]

And if you are in the area (western Chicago suburbs), you can get it by 1p the same day.

[temp0826]

My father is a metalworker and I grew up with stacks of their encyclopedias all over my house. Was always amazed the sheer amount of stuff in them, probably saved a few trees with their website.

[eltwitto]

I've been a big fan of theirs for a long time. I used to sit and browse their huge printed catalog in my spare time just to discover more parts to consider for use in my builds.

[tengbretson]

It wrecks the back button and they cannot be bothered to optimize for mobile in the slightest. And I'm not exactly asking for some janky "fake mobile app" here, how about some basic CSS breakpoints.

Any member of the anti-modern-web-stack crowd that elevates McMaster as its shining example of how it ought to be, is about as "smart" as the site.

[int_19h]

What's wrong with the back button there? It seems to be working fine.

[metalman]

https://www.barnstormers.com/

Wana buy a bolt?(aircraft), or a fighter jet?

It's been stable since the internet.

It needs a few scripts for total functionality, but you can look at everything on site with just plain html, and it's fast.Internal search is good.And random external searches for aircraft stuff will land you there.

[deaux]

On my browser the screen jumps around while vertically scrolling on the McMaster homepage. It's not all rainbows and sunshine.

[SirFatty]

yeah, must be McMaster and not you.

[more_corn]

Stop telling me what I have or haven’t heard. There’s no better way to irritate someone right off the bat.

[tpmoney]

Stop telling people what will or won't irritate others right off the bat. There's no better way to wrongly speak for someone else. :)

More seriously, it's probably a good bet that most people haven't heard of McMaster Carr in general, and if they have, probably not in the context of having a smart or well designed website. So it's not a terrible article headline. And of all the click bait style headlines that could be used, it's probably the least offensive. At least they give you the name in the headline.

[apwell23]

i live in the area and this place is one of the most toxic workplaces to have ever existed.

[IAmBroom]

Details?

[lostmsu]

You need to enable JavaScript.

[cbsks]

Imagine an alternate universe where Amazon has a similar interface. It would be the most amazing tool.

[varun_ch]

https://www.digitec.ch/en Digitec/Galaxus (Switzerland’s online shopping site) is FANTASTIC

[imtringued]

Germans have https://geizhals.de

[hobofan]

[2022]

[tejtm]

love metalwork & buy parts but seriously; F@##% anyone that messes with my navigation back.

[landmass]

Absolutely! I now won't enter the site because they kill the back button.

[eltwitto]

So true... I immediately close the page and move on.

[IAmBroom]

What are you talking about? I tried snaking through the MC site; back button worked just fine.