Webmaster forum - Today's Rant: Cool URIs don't change

Author

Today's Rant: Cool URIs don't change

Karl Groves

2007-03-28, 7:19 pm

In case this article, written by Tim Berners-Lee 9 years ago hasn't gotten
enough traction http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI I'd like to add the
following anecdote to those of you who actually sell products on your site.

My wife is a major foodie. Almost all of her free time is dedicated to
cooking, whether that's finding good recipes, watching cooking shows, or
shopping for cooking stuff. She periodically sends me URLs to products she
is interested in on cooking-related sites like Williams-Sonoma, etc. I
save these URLs in a special folder I created in Outlook just so I can
retrieve them later for things like her birthday, Valentine's day, X-mas,
and so on.

This week is her birthday, so I was going through these saved up URLs to
buy her some stuff. Nearly all the links for Crate & Barrel and Williams-
Sonoma were broken. Now, I understand that some products may become
discontinued, or some links may be pointing to special offers and sales,
but when I click on nearly two dozen links (between both sites) and almost
all of them return 404, something is clearly wrong.

So, what was my reaction? I took my business to Cooking.com whose URLs were
not broken. Williams-Sonoma and Crate & Barrel both lost a few hundred
dollars woth of business to Cooking.com today.

I think this is a symptom of not understanding users. In a lot of ways,
users online are not very different than users at a brick & mortar store.
If you owned a cooking store and someone came in and said "I want a
Calphalon Dutch Oven" and you didn't have it (but had one by All-Clad)
would you say "No. You can't have it. We don't have any. Goodbye" or would
you say "I'm sorry, we don't carry those anymore. However, we do have this
excellent Dutch Oven by All-Clad. In fact, you might like this one better,
because it has a copper core, whereas the Calphalon one did not". Of
course you would. And in doing so, you'd be utilizing an opportunity to
salvage a potential lost sale, rather than ensuring the lost sale. That
being said, why in the world would someone simply chase away a customer
online simply because the requested product is no longer available? Stupid.

--
Karl Groves
http://www.thehotrodclassifieds.com

paul@paulwatt.info

2007-03-28, 7:19 pm

On 28 Mar, 17:18, Karl Groves <k...@NOSPAMkarlcore.com> wrote:
> In case this article, written by Tim Berners-Lee 9 years ago hasn't gotten
> enough tractionhttp://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI I'd like to add the
> following anecdote to those of you who actually sell products on your site.
>
> My wife is a major foodie. Almost all of her free time is dedicated to
> cooking, whether that's finding good recipes, watching cooking shows, or
> shopping for cooking stuff. She periodically sends me URLs to products she
> is interested in on cooking-related sites like Williams-Sonoma, etc. I
> save these URLs in a special folder I created in Outlook just so I can
> retrieve them later for things like her birthday, Valentine's day, X-mas,
> and so on.
>
> This week is her birthday, so I was going through these saved up URLs to
> buy her some stuff. Nearly all the links for Crate & Barrel and Williams-
> Sonoma were broken. Now, I understand that some products may become
> discontinued, or some links may be pointing to special offers and sales,
> but when I click on nearly two dozen links (between both sites) and almost
> all of them return 404, something is clearly wrong.
>
> So, what was my reaction? I took my business to Cooking.com whose URLs were
> not broken. Williams-Sonoma and Crate & Barrel both lost a few hundred
> dollars woth of business to Cooking.com today.
>
> I think this is a symptom of not understanding users. In a lot of ways,
> users online are not very different than users at a brick & mortar store.
> If you owned a cooking store and someone came in and said "I want a
> Calphalon Dutch Oven" and you didn't have it (but had one by All-Clad)
> would you say "No. You can't have it. We don't have any. Goodbye" or would
> you say "I'm sorry, we don't carry those anymore. However, we do have this
> excellent Dutch Oven by All-Clad. In fact, you might like this one better,
> because it has a copper core, whereas the Calphalon one did not". Of
> course you would. And in doing so, you'd be utilizing an opportunity to
> salvage a potential lost sale, rather than ensuring the lost sale. That
> being said, why in the world would someone simply chase away a customer
> online simply because the requested product is no longer available? Stupid.
>
> --
> Karl Groveshttp://www.thehotrodclassifieds.com

It boils down to lazyness mate, 1) on the part of the webmaster and 2)
on the part of whoever admisters the database. All boils down to the
same thing really.

Paul

http://www.paulwattdesigns.com

Andy Dingley

2007-03-28, 7:19 pm

On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 16:18:13 GMT, Karl Groves <karl@NOSPAMkarlcore.com>
wrote:

>So, what was my reaction? I took my business to Cooking.com whose URLs were
>not broken. Williams-Sonoma and Crate & Barrel both lost a few hundred
>dollars woth of business to Cooking.com today.

A couple of weeks ago, Amazon barfed and threw away all of my "Saved for
Later" choices. That's about 80 books, at about £20 each.

I was wondering afterwards, just _how_much_ Amazon lost by doing this.
OK, a saved product code isn't a purchase, but it's still a statistical
fraction of one, and when there are many of them, that's a chunk of
change worth hanging onto. A couple had been there for some years, and
when I can next afford £80 for a book on Korean furniture, I might still
buy it. However I do put a good deal of business through their site
(couple of £k some years, and that's just the personal ones, not the
office geekpile) and nearly all of them spend some time in the saved
bucket before I do a big order in one go.

80 x 20 x 0.2 (chance of ever getting bought) x 0.2 (future value) is
still > $100 That's a business dumping a hundred bucks just to
recycle some database rows....

Blinky the Shark

2007-03-28, 11:18 pm

Karl Groves wrote:

> I think this is a symptom of not understanding users. In a lot of
> ways, users online are not very different than users at a brick &
> mortar store. If you owned a cooking store and someone came in and
> said "I want a Calphalon Dutch Oven" and you didn't have it (but had
> one by All-Clad) would you say "No. You can't have it. We don't have
> any. Goodbye" or would you say "I'm sorry, we don't carry those
> anymore. However, we do have this excellent Dutch Oven by All-Clad. In
> fact, you might like this one better, because it has a copper core,
> whereas the Calphalon one did not". Of

Another thing I miss is knowledgeable shop help. These days, the store
employee would probably just shrug and say "No, we don't have those",
and if you said anything like, "Okay, I'll check at Competitor Corp.'",
he would shrug and say "No problem" -- as if there was any chance in
hell that *might* be causing him a problem.

--
Blinky RLU 297263
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

Karl Groves

2007-03-28, 11:18 pm

Blinky the Shark <no.spam@box.invalid> wrote in
news:slrnf0mc5q.c4v.no.spam@thurston.blinkynet.net:

> Karl Groves wrote:
>
>
> Another thing I miss is knowledgeable shop help. These days, the store
> employee would probably just shrug and say "No, we don't have those",
> and if you said anything like, "Okay, I'll check at Competitor Corp.'",
> he would shrug and say "No problem" -- as if there was any chance in
> hell that *might* be causing him a problem.

Alas, the biggest problem of the free market economy: When you pay someone
minimum wage, you get a minimum wage employee. Minimum wage jobs attract
people without the intelligence, training, or personal will to get
something better. As a result, the consumer suffers.

--
Karl Groves
http://www.thehotrodclassifieds.com

Blinky the Shark

2007-03-29, 4:18 am

Karl Groves wrote:
> Blinky the Shark <no.spam@box.invalid> wrote in
> news:slrnf0mc5q.c4v.no.spam@thurston.blinkynet.net:
>
>
> Alas, the biggest problem of the free market economy: When you pay
> someone minimum wage, you get a minimum wage employee. Minimum wage
> jobs attract people without the intelligence, training, or personal
> will to get something better. As a result, the consumer suffers.

I remember when, say, the big-ticket-enameled-appliance salesmen at
places like Sears were "ol' pros" that knew their line and the
competition's. Why? Because they were on commission. Now they're just
minwage kids that weren't lucky enough to get put in the audio
department -- but at least they finally got out of McDonald's.

--
Blinky RLU 297263
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

Karl Groves

2007-03-29, 4:18 am

Blinky the Shark <no.spam@box.invalid> wrote in
news:slrnf0mg5r.c4v.no.spam@thurston.blinkynet.net:

> Karl Groves wrote:
>
> I remember when, say, the big-ticket-enameled-appliance salesmen at
> places like Sears were "ol' pros" that knew their line and the
> competition's. Why? Because they were on commission. Now they're
just
> minwage kids that weren't lucky enough to get put in the audio
> department -- but at least they finally got out of McDonald's.
>
>

You're exactly right. I used to work at Sears part time. I remember when
they started ending the commissions for new hires. I remember when you
could go to the tool department, ask the guy about the difference between
a DA sander and an orbital sander and get a well informed decision.
Today the people they have working there are lucky to know the difference
between a belt sander and a screwdriver.

--
Karl Groves
http://www.thehotrodclassifieds.com

Blinky the Shark

2007-03-29, 4:18 am

Karl Groves wrote:
> Blinky the Shark <no.spam@box.invalid> wrote in
> news:slrnf0mg5r.c4v.no.spam@thurston.blinkynet.net:
>
> just
>
> You're exactly right. I used to work at Sears part time. I remember
> when

Me too. Division 20 and Credit Department, late 1960s. Commission on
the first; full-time summer job while in college. Second was part time
my senior year.

> they started ending the commissions for new hires. I remember when
> you could go to the tool department, ask the guy about the difference
> between a DA sander and an orbital sander and get a well informed
> decision. Today the people they have working there are lucky to know
> the difference between a belt sander and a screwdriver.

Eggs actly.

If you recall, they also had a full-on section in Hardware for fasteners
and other Small Dammits. Now the only Small Stuff they have is
tool-related: pretty much just drill bits and sockets. Forgetting that,
I recently stopped into one I was driving by for some small nails. The
closest thing they had was "variety packs" of Stuff To Hang Pictures
With, which included not just brads but wire and hooks and eyelets and
stuff.

--
Blinky RLU 297263
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

hansBKK

2007-03-29, 4:18 am

Karl Groves <karl@NOSPAMkarlcore.com> wrote in
news:Xns99017CFC86936karlkarlcorecom@130.81.64.196:

> In case this article, written by Tim Berners-Lee 9 years ago hasn't
> gotten enough traction http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

Also very important for SEO! I know this isn't anything new, but for
those that might be wondering how to implement these ideas without
getting into the higher realms of techtitude. . .

I've recently (slowly) started moving my sites from static html to php,
and am struggling with how to do this. Some techniques allow you to
permanently redirect to the new filenames, or you could have PHP parse
ALL your html. There are also more complex methods using mod_rewrite and
..htaccess, but not only am I inconfident about my abilities, I'm also
concerned about what the site will need to do when the NEXT technology
comes along, now we have to redirect/rewrite two sets of URLs?

So I've decided to make every URL a folder - every page gets its own
directory, it can be index.html, index.php, next year index.whatever. So
none of my URLs need to have a file extension, and the underlying
technology can radically change, but I'm sure:

http://www.company.com/about/

will still be valid an Internet century from now. . .

And the best thing about this method - it's dead easy peasy! (Yes I'm
lazy, but aren't the most elegant solutions usually the simplest ones?
<g> )

Of course in order for this to work for something like product
descriptions, you'd need to come up with a relatively permanent taxonomy
for your product lines independent of your internal database IDs (UPI
barcode, whatever), so that the next product, replacing the old one in
that category can get dropped into that slot, or if you don't have one,
create a page that suggests similar ones. . .