I feel like just in the past few months they’ve all tanked in usability. Amazon is almost physically painful to navigate now… They used to be the “gold standard” in interactivity with how everything kinda got you where you wanted to go (I know it’s been a long road, but it’s literally all AI slop now and I can’t even scroll without something becoming a popup).
Lowe’s and Home Depot are just as bad. Useless search, constantly shifting UI. AI generated photos.
Fuck it. I’m only shopping at McMaster Carr from now on. I don’t need a fancy magnetic knife rack from a 6 letter lifestyle company that’s been around as long as a fruit fly. I’m getting an 18in Screw Mount Magnetic Tool Holder with 1 1/8in depth that’s RoHS 3 compliant and comes with free CAD models.
Hot take (?) but Amazon’s UI has literally always sucked
It sucked, but it used to be at least snappy. Now it takes multiple seconds to load and it’s shifting the layout the whole time, even in the native app!
Not only am I only shopping at mcmaster carr I’m only using their physical catalog
Still think the website is awesome for just having CAD files you can download. That alone is amazing.
i do almost nothing on cell phone. the mobile UX for big sites just plain blows 99% of the time. i use a handful of apps to check the status of things and i even use an app for the fediverse.
doing things like shopping or paying bills or whatever is always on a real computer, where i have easy access to the full suite of tools in a nice browser with extensions to make it so i can adapt and overcome the latest asshole marketing driven mechanic.
in rare occasions i might casually browse a few specific and not hateful shopping sites on my phone, to do basic shit like check prices, but if it becomes more serious, i switch to computer.
my parents and other family members seem to try and do everything on their phones and it looks absolutely brutal
yeah I’m the same. it’s an awful experience to use a mobile as your main computer
I haven’t used the Amazon mobile interface in a while (I honestly rarely order anything). I just happened to be re-organizing the kitchen and the massive knife block I have was getting in my way so I went to look for a magnetic bar holder. It took like 8 minutes to even get to a real listing then I gave up and found something close on McMaster Carr (ON MOBILE) in like 5 seconds.
I’ll probably end up just going to Ace or Harbor Freight or something and picking one up in person. I prefer to actually touch grass when I spend money anyways.
Even just loading the Home Depot website on a mobile browser is laborious. Like your phone is struggling under its might to show you some picture of tools and some semi-organized colors and text. I just assume they have terrible engineering practices and packed it with behavior tracking. Better not try to tap the search bar while it’s loading, it might throw up a popup just before and send you to some promotion you didn’t want.
I was gonna suggest McMaster-Carr as the only good site but you beat me to it lmao. These tech bros are always waxing poetic about “reducing friction” yet they make these bloated-ass websites that fail the most basic usability standards. Love to have to make a uBlock Origin filter to prevent Amazon’s dogshit “AI” popover from taking up a third of my fucking screen
Anything that I can buy on McMaster I do because of how much better their site is than anything else. It’s on the expensive side, but I can actually find what I want. If they ever sloppify I will become a hermit.
They aren’t trying to reduce friction for you to buy what you want, they’re trying to reduce friction for you to buy what they want. Capitalist efficiency at it’s finest
And it’s not just the website that has gotten worse. Logistics are worse, don’t think the deliveries have ever been slower than now, customer service is worse.
Unfortunately other stores are even worse. I’ve noticed some stores have one quick search index for suggestions while typing in the search bar and one more complex search showing the actual results and the suggestions in the search bar are consistently closer to what I’m looking for than the top 30 actual search results.
They are making websites terrible to move you towards AI-slop agents that will buy three wrong products before finally processing your poorly worded prompt. When you stop paying attention to prices, and let the agent take over, they can stop doing sales. They can also start hiding products with discounts from agents (when it is caught through the browser, or the metadata) and funnel your agent directly into the high-price “AI agent” pricing; given that anyone using the token-intensive computer agent feature is probably subscribed to an AI service.
picclick is a sort of eBay frontend that allows keyword search and shows things that are listed but algorithmically buried on eBay itself.
Thanks for the tip—that’s so much nicer to use than eBay! I hate how much whitespace there is and how giant everything is on modern websites—give me density or give me death!
Craiglist solved the world wide web, and they will never be forgiven for it
I was thinking of buying something from bestbuy but the website kept crashing my phone so I didn’t buy anything.
HEY DO YOU WANT TO BUY THING HERE HAVE AN AD THAT BLOCKS YOU FROM BUYING THING
Besides ai, I hate how much shit they put that uses way too much Internet. Like fuck off I don’t need some special animation shit just show me some small png of your product. And you know those website exclusive loading bars at the top of page that are in the colour of the website? Fuck them too. My Internet is litteraly disconnected and your fake loading is still slowly progressing. Who are you kidding? Web browser already has a loading bar and it doesn’t lie to me. Same goes for website exclusive refresh page
If your browser is Firefox and use uBlock Origin, there is an option of Block media elements larger than _ kb.
It is good. Animations or pictures beyond the prescribed size are replaced by a red border. Clicking it will load that image. Or you can temporarily turn it off for the website and reload the tab.
For the websites I visit often and wish to see images in, there is an option to exclude them.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-large-media-elements
Saves net and makes browsing faster. Can disable autoplay in some sites too.
Does it work on mobile browsers?
Yes. Works in Android Firefox, with the uBlock Origin extension
Then there’s the AI assistant popup that takes up 1/3 of the screen and breaks the website. Also it can only regurgitate FAQ and can’t actually help you or gives you completely wrong information.
This was partially an ad for the McMaster Carr website, still one of the greatest experiences on the Internet. It’s like stumbling into an oasis after being in the desert for a week.
It really is well organized. I remember Grainger being OK too, but McMaster Carr’s catalog is goated
It feels like a productivity tool. I can find exactly what I want in like 5 clicks/keystrokes max. Absolutely beautiful web design that every site should be like. Especially since each catalog entry has exactly what you’d need to know right there in front of you.
Folks, would you recommend the GUBGIR over the RUNFUT? I’ve heard mixed things about NIBROO in the 3 hours since they incorporated, and might switch to SUKNUT
The BOFFA beats those by a mile
