<story><title>Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/shipping-delays-out-of-stock-items-amazon-isnt-the-only-shop-online-11586165400</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dan_quixote</author><text>My nomination is McMaster-Carr (mcmaster.com) - They have a huge catalog of parts&amp;#x2F;tools yet somehow it&amp;#x27;s so intuitive to browse.  I was a mechanical engineer in a previous life and McMaster&amp;#x27;s website was my bible.  Step one for any new prototype design was to browse this site.  Best case scenario, you could cobble together your prototype from various COTS (commercial off the shelf) McMaster parts.  And if that wasn&amp;#x27;t an option, scan the catalog for necessary parts and raw materials.  If they don&amp;#x27;t exist at McMaster, your design idea just got at least 10X expensive and lead time doubled.</text></item><item><author>mauvehaus</author><text>I beg to differ. Rock Auto is where it&amp;#x27;s at for auto parts. The website is ugly as hammered shit, but it&amp;#x27;s fast, shows you the options grouped by rough quality level (economy&amp;#x2F;you cheapskate, daily driver, performance, etc), shows you what part to select so it &lt;i&gt;ships from the same warehouse&lt;/i&gt; as the parts already in your cart and saves you shipping, and returns are painless (disclaimer: I&amp;#x27;ve only ever done returns for core exchanges). I have never had a better online purchasing experience.&lt;p&gt;And the prices are a fraction of what you pay at a brick and mortar place. Especially for e.g. wiper blades.&lt;p&gt;Companies that &amp;quot;get&amp;quot; e-commerce are out there, but a lot of them are quietly and competently doing their thing in unsexy domains and aren&amp;#x27;t trying to eat the whole pie.&lt;p&gt;Rock Auto, for instance, isn&amp;#x27;t trying to serve every idiot on the planet with a car. If you can&amp;#x27;t keep your lefts&amp;#x2F;rights and fronts&amp;#x2F;backs straight when ordering e.g. brake hoses, you&amp;#x27;re going to find it a frustrating experience. Putting up a (small) barrier to entry to keep out the least clueful people probably helps keep their costs down.&lt;p&gt;Not affiliated, just a very happy repeat customer.</text></item><item><author>jakearmitage</author><text>HomeDepot&amp;#x27;s ecommerce is a joke. Not only the shopping experience is poor, they treat logistics as if they were doing you a favor. And, on top of all that, you get damaged items. I made 7 purchases and all 7, in different periods of time, had to be returned or replaced.&lt;p&gt;Same for Lowe&amp;#x27;s. There&amp;#x27;s a reason people shop on Amazon. Other than BestBuy, no other retailer &amp;quot;gets&amp;quot; ecommerce.</text></item><item><author>ebg13</author><text>I tried ordering some things from Home Depot the other day, and they silently cancelled half of my order while still charging me the same amount for delivery from the store and while saying that some things can only be delivered from a warehouse and that some things can only be delivered from a specific store &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; that delivery from each store has a $45 minimum purchase before they&amp;#x27;ll even consider delivery despite the fact that they&amp;#x27;re charging the same amount for delivery from the store no matter how much you order. That of course makes it difficult to then order the remaining items even if you call them and demand a refund for the first delivery fee, because the remaining items now don&amp;#x27;t meet the minimum. Then the delivery from the warehouse is some weird arbitrary calculation involving a nominal+ amount that then gets divided up across the items you&amp;#x27;re ordering (3.77 here, 2.83 there, and so on) such that if you remove any item the delivery fees for the other items all go up, and then there are some items that deliver for free if you order more than $45 worth &lt;i&gt;from the warehouse&lt;/i&gt; which of course doesn&amp;#x27;t help you if some items can only be purchased from the individual stores. And then there are still things like cans of spraypaint that you can&amp;#x27;t get delivered at all and you&amp;#x27;re only allowed to pick up in person.&lt;p&gt;I know that right now is an exceptional time, but this kind of shopping experience is part of why people choose Amazon first.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sambroner</author><text>I was always shocked by McMaster-Carr&amp;#x27;s delivery speed. I felt like the parts would arrive as quickly as I could have conceivably picked them up.&lt;p&gt;This was 10 years ago now, so sort of like Amazon Prime before it became ubiquitous, but for materials and tools. However McMaster was and remains much better organized and much better spec-ed.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/shipping-delays-out-of-stock-items-amazon-isnt-the-only-shop-online-11586165400</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dan_quixote</author><text>My nomination is McMaster-Carr (mcmaster.com) - They have a huge catalog of parts&amp;#x2F;tools yet somehow it&amp;#x27;s so intuitive to browse.  I was a mechanical engineer in a previous life and McMaster&amp;#x27;s website was my bible.  Step one for any new prototype design was to browse this site.  Best case scenario, you could cobble together your prototype from various COTS (commercial off the shelf) McMaster parts.  And if that wasn&amp;#x27;t an option, scan the catalog for necessary parts and raw materials.  If they don&amp;#x27;t exist at McMaster, your design idea just got at least 10X expensive and lead time doubled.</text></item><item><author>mauvehaus</author><text>I beg to differ. Rock Auto is where it&amp;#x27;s at for auto parts. The website is ugly as hammered shit, but it&amp;#x27;s fast, shows you the options grouped by rough quality level (economy&amp;#x2F;you cheapskate, daily driver, performance, etc), shows you what part to select so it &lt;i&gt;ships from the same warehouse&lt;/i&gt; as the parts already in your cart and saves you shipping, and returns are painless (disclaimer: I&amp;#x27;ve only ever done returns for core exchanges). I have never had a better online purchasing experience.&lt;p&gt;And the prices are a fraction of what you pay at a brick and mortar place. Especially for e.g. wiper blades.&lt;p&gt;Companies that &amp;quot;get&amp;quot; e-commerce are out there, but a lot of them are quietly and competently doing their thing in unsexy domains and aren&amp;#x27;t trying to eat the whole pie.&lt;p&gt;Rock Auto, for instance, isn&amp;#x27;t trying to serve every idiot on the planet with a car. If you can&amp;#x27;t keep your lefts&amp;#x2F;rights and fronts&amp;#x2F;backs straight when ordering e.g. brake hoses, you&amp;#x27;re going to find it a frustrating experience. Putting up a (small) barrier to entry to keep out the least clueful people probably helps keep their costs down.&lt;p&gt;Not affiliated, just a very happy repeat customer.</text></item><item><author>jakearmitage</author><text>HomeDepot&amp;#x27;s ecommerce is a joke. Not only the shopping experience is poor, they treat logistics as if they were doing you a favor. And, on top of all that, you get damaged items. I made 7 purchases and all 7, in different periods of time, had to be returned or replaced.&lt;p&gt;Same for Lowe&amp;#x27;s. There&amp;#x27;s a reason people shop on Amazon. Other than BestBuy, no other retailer &amp;quot;gets&amp;quot; ecommerce.</text></item><item><author>ebg13</author><text>I tried ordering some things from Home Depot the other day, and they silently cancelled half of my order while still charging me the same amount for delivery from the store and while saying that some things can only be delivered from a warehouse and that some things can only be delivered from a specific store &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; that delivery from each store has a $45 minimum purchase before they&amp;#x27;ll even consider delivery despite the fact that they&amp;#x27;re charging the same amount for delivery from the store no matter how much you order. That of course makes it difficult to then order the remaining items even if you call them and demand a refund for the first delivery fee, because the remaining items now don&amp;#x27;t meet the minimum. Then the delivery from the warehouse is some weird arbitrary calculation involving a nominal+ amount that then gets divided up across the items you&amp;#x27;re ordering (3.77 here, 2.83 there, and so on) such that if you remove any item the delivery fees for the other items all go up, and then there are some items that deliver for free if you order more than $45 worth &lt;i&gt;from the warehouse&lt;/i&gt; which of course doesn&amp;#x27;t help you if some items can only be purchased from the individual stores. And then there are still things like cans of spraypaint that you can&amp;#x27;t get delivered at all and you&amp;#x27;re only allowed to pick up in person.&lt;p&gt;I know that right now is an exceptional time, but this kind of shopping experience is part of why people choose Amazon first.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jbay808</author><text>I like McMaster-Carr, but I often hear them being held up as a positive UX example when, in my experience, their website is endlessly frustrating. They often force you into choosing arbitrary categories too early, break tabbed browsing expectations, and have a frustrating mix of metric and imperial measurements that can&amp;#x27;t be escaped. Their pricing is also generally at quite a premium.&lt;p&gt;For example, let&amp;#x27;s say I want a piece of hollow metal cylinder (any metal, to be determined later based on cost and availability), with an ID of around 12 mm and a wall thickness of at least 5 mm, at least 150 mm long. It ends up being a needlessly frustrating experience even for such a simple item.</text></comment>