UPDATE: Looking to go all non-www. See that article here.
I actually mean this quite literally and a little less scary than what you’re probably thinking.
This is old news, but still it lingers that people think you must type in www.google.com or whatever site in order to get to it, on a rare occasion I’ve encountered people that think they need to actually type EVERYTHING out; http://www.google.com/ – this is a terrible waste of time. You only need to type in google.com and hit enter.
So, for the record, to get to any website, all it should take is website.com or .net, .org and so on. The browser and website should handle the rest. On one very rare occasion I came to a website that just went to an error page if you didn’t use www, and this was a high PageRanked website, it was a little too frightening to think about how many potential customers they were losing because of this HUGE, yet easily fixable problem, so I gave them the helpful tip.
Even stranger, I still see companies putting www or even worse http:// in print ads which should never happen. Admittedly, I’ve used www in print ads that I’ve designed and I do understand why some others do it, to fill in the area, make it more squared off and symmetrical looking, for example what looks better;
555.123.4567
cars.com
OR
555.123.4567
www.cars.com
If you think the second, I agree… because it’s hierarchy is tiered from top to bottom in a better, more structured looking way.
One place that should NEVER EVER give the full structured URL is when you’re on hold with customer service over the phone. I’m sure many of you have experienced this;
“Thanks for holding, we’re glad to have you as one of our customer’s (translation = we like your money, please stay with us), did you know that you can also get help online at h-t-t-p-:-/-/-w-w-w-.-website-.-com-/-help ?”
It’s really quite absurd, especially because they want you to get off the phone, it saves them time and money if you get off the phone and go on the computer, you’d think they would want you to remember. All that is needed to be said is; website-.-com-/-help (website dot com slash help) and that’s it, and these are often tech savvy companies, or big companies that spend millions on marketing and feedback and efficiency.
One other mentionable phasing out of www that companies are practicing has been taking place over the past couple years and is due to Web 2.0 in my opinion is the actual removal off www from their URL infrastructure and having their domain redirect to non-www. Most notably, Twitter does this (not that they were the first mind you), Digg also does this and many others.
Go ahead and click on the link below;
and it’ll appear to remove the www, but more accurately it will redirect to the non-www version of the domain. A better example would be to copy and paste http://www.twitter.com/ into your browser and hit enter.
Oppositely, I make sure all of my domains forward to the www versions. I do this to keep organization, consistency, I think it looks nicer and more professional and most importantly for SEO purposes.
Thanks for reading, Bryan
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