Jul 11 2007
Using Correct Word Order in URLs
When a company launches a new service they usually spend some time picking the URL to advertise that service. Beyond understanding that URLs are UI and picking a name that customers will understand, the decision will eventually come down to picking one of two possible formats:
- globalservices.wickets.com; or,
- wickets.com/globalservices.
At first, both seem to have the same value. But they don’t. An often overlooked fact in making this decision is the now prevalent auto-complete function in most modern browsers, where the URL is completed as a user types.
Why is this important?
Well, lots of companies put their support site in the support.wickets.com style, before the name of the company. This means you have to type the entire word support and then type the first few letters of the company name to take advantage of the auto-complete feature in the browser. This eliminates most of the time savings for this feature.
Instead, if the support came after the company name, then a user would type part of the company name first then could quickly grab the “support” link from the auto-complete and be done.
For visiting support.dell.com, a user would type nine keystrokes at a minimum. For dell.com/support, a user only types one to two key strokes. Overall, you have increased user URL-typing efficiency by at least 75%.