But the systems are designed to match similar words eg “perforator” and “perforated” in the same way it would probably assume that if you said “creepie” you really meant “creepy”.
But why design in that way, the words are different, so why not offer a choice of one or the other? I went to another site linked to ebay looking for shirts, the offered me over 17,000 on god knows how many pages, with no way of defining my wishes, they obviously employ some marketing "genius" that thinks people have the patience to browse through 17,000 shirts, ridiculous, off to M&S for me
Online catalogues can work well if people know exactly what they are after and what it's called... I've got to repair some drain pipe, but I've got absolutely no idea what the tee type part is called... With a catalogue I can flick through the drainage section and find a photo of what I'm looking for, with a website I can't! If I type "drainpipe tee" into the search box on SF website I get a load of irrelevant stuff! Edit: I've just typed "drainpipe" into the SF website search box... 3 of the 7 pages show drainpipe and fittings, the other 4 are irrelevant, and there's no sign of the the part I need! Edit 2: just realised I should have typed "guttering" and trawled through the many pages there, I have now found what I want. With a paper catalogue I'd have had this sorted 10 minutes ago!
As an apprentice 35 years ago I was sent to the merchants to buy something on account. Bloke asked "Is that the 34459 or the 46653 model" as if he was an expert. I asked him what the difference was "I dont know" It was a little bit of power that a sad little man had
I am DIY. Very experienced, Know what I want to do and have idea of the products I want to use, there are so many different ways of doing things, so many variants. I used to be able to flip through pages in the plumbing section and select items that till then I did not know existed, to enable me to do the job in the best way possible. Now. I have to type in search term, that may not show ways of doing a job that I never knew existed. Catalogues were a really good reference tool. Now I have to hope I am skilful enough to enter a search term that will find what I want. Type in the term junction box. How long does it take to find what you want? Really really miss the catalogue. Online version with pages you can turn would easily let me browse many many product quuickly. Glance at page and decide none, or one product will do. I suspect that the range offered will reduce, all bad news for suppliers and those who don’t really know what exactly they want.