Why I shop via print catalogs in 2025

Shoutout to what is probably the best online catalog I have discovered recently, https://rockauto.com. Dynamic, but also fast, easy to navigate, well-organized, every part can be expanded for more information, and it even does things like help you identify which parts minimize shipping cost and suggest SKUs that you may need in addition (like spark plug wires when you add spark plugs to the cart) all without being annoying or pushy.

They talk about information density. I'm not going to claim the site developers were competent, but I think the general trends are because companies don't want to pay for multiple designs for desktop and mobile (and deal with the ambiguous threshold between them).

Making high density responsive design is really really hard (if not impossible - mobile just doesn't have enough space to provide detailed data). This is especially true for tables.

With print you have a single fixed page size, and everything else in the design flows from that.

I'm not sure what the answer is here.

Yeah ive been using rockauto for all my autoparts for years. Always hate when I don't have time to wait and have to try and go through the garbage websites of all the different local autoparts dealers just to get gouged.

Reminds me of https://mcmaster.com.

HN recently had an article detailing just how exquisitely designed this website is. Like, a mere rollover of a catalog item prefetches the entire page for that item in the background such that a click-through is almost instantaneous unless you click at the exact same time you mouseover.

They’re way, way cheaper than the price you’d pay from a shop (annd half what my anuto parts store charges) and you can even choose the oem part or upgrades if available.

Their return policy is also good. I just returned a part that didn’t fit, they paid shipping and they just refunded the money to my credit card.