| > www vs. no-www, as a matter of "putting the customer first" is so INCREDIBLY insignificant I don't know, I've always been fascinated by the premium of domains that are just one character shorter, and all of the startups that exclude a vowel to get a compressed (or maybe just available) name. That could reflect actual user preferences. UX theorists convinced me over the last decade that user behavior is shaped by tiny moments and irritations that we think are insignificant at first glance. A few 100 ms extra in delays may seem barely perceptible, but they can kill a site. It's not implausible that a few extra keystrokes could do the same.[0] On the other hand, redirects seem like a happy medium, so long as they're fast enough. nasa.gov uses a redirect, that seems fine. Note that they were driven to that (from 'www'-only) after confused fans kept writing in to complain that "http://nasa.gov" was a dead end and that they didn't "even know the basics of running a website."[1] [0] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/response-times-3-important-...
N.B.: In that link, Jakob Nielsen recommended making "www" optional through redirects. It's been a while, so not sure his current thoughts, but the same reasons would apply today.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/compound-domain-names/ [1] https://blogs.nasa.gov/nasadotgov/2011/05/31/post_1306860816...
NASA's case provides a real example of something Jakob Nielsen pointed out in the first link: usability is a slave to expectations. So if enough popular sites are using naked domains, and your naked domain just 404s, some users will dismiss your site as unreliable. |