• A brief survey of URLs

  When designing websites, what the URL looks like (and how memorable it is) is just as relevant as what the content of the page actually is. Here are some screenshots of URLs and titles of webpages as examples, ranging from close to perfection to downright awful. 

  The way I generated these screenshots was as close to how a naive web user would: I googled the name of the company or product, and kept clicking on the first link I saw that took me to the product till I got to the product page. I tried to choose flagship products, like the MacBook Pro from Apple or the D3X from Nikon. 

  Apple

  

  Score: 10/10

  The good:

  Short, no junk.

  The not so good:

  Since the navigation is Apple>Mac>MacBook Pro, it could be apple.com/mac/macbookpro (or apple.com/mac/bookpro) 

  Alienware

  
  

  Score: 5/10

  See the junk beginning to creep up? What’s “p”? What’s “~ck=mn?” Why am I seeing this? Why can’t it be “www.dell.com/alienware/aurora”?

  Dell

  

  Aaargh! What is going on here? Can the fine folks at Dell not come up with a better name than “New Inspiron 15 (N5040)”? 

  Score: 5/10

  HP

  

  Oh no. Why “www8”? “Product detail”? Really? Why not “hp.com/probook/6560b”? 

  Fail. 4/10. 

  Adobe

  

  Score: 8/10

  “products” is pointless. (-1)

  the “.html” at the end serves no purpose, and just shows poor design. (-1)

  
  

  Amazon 

  

  Before you say Amazon is a retailer with a zillion products, let me remind you that I’m looking at their own product: the Kindle. Same rules apply. 

  Score: 6/10

  The bad: URL so long you can’t see the end of it. Junk visible: “dp”. But at least the URL is descriptive. 

  Barnes and Noble

  

  Score: 7/10

  Oh, so close. Of only it had been “barnesandnoble.com/nook/”. I’m sure that number is meaningful in it’s own way. 

  Nikon

  

  The good: all of it is visible. 

  The bad: it’s got “lineup” in the URL. The man who wrote that worked in a world of Excel sheets and business-speak, and never thought about what a customer would think about. 

  7/10. 

  Olympus

  

  Sigh. Just “E-5” in the title? Oh, we all know what a cpg section is. And sure, every time I think of the E-5, I remember it’s the 1525th product. Try this: “olympus.com/e5” 

  3/10.

  Canon

  

  Score: 4/10

  Junk, more junk. Redundancy: “cusa” is Canon USA, something that’s already there. Why “slr_cameras” instead of “SLR”? Also, look at the title: A flagship DSLR comes under Consumer and Home Office? Really? 

  Daring Fireball

  

  Yes, I know DF isn’t a company that sells you products. Nonetheless, it’s interesting how a link blog handles so many URLs. Answer: it handles them well. 

  Score: 10/10

  
  

  GMail

  This is the URL we all see when we log into GMail:

  

  It’s nice, clean, and short. It could be nicer, cleaner, and shorter, but come on, it’s OK. 

  Score: 9/10

  And here’s the URL for a specific email message:

  

  Longer, with a weird number, but hey, that’s the point. 

  Score: 9/10 (points off for /u/0..”)

  Finally, this very page. 

  
  

  Hmm, not as good as it could be. The “post/weird number” is annoying but generated by Tumblr. 

  Score: 6/10

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