Typing a URL in the brower's address bar

Is it really that difficult?

[jamesa]

I just got off the phone with a friend... she let her domain expire... I called to walk her through the payment form. She's been using the Internet daily for almost 6 years, yet I spent a solid 5 minutes on the phone trying to get her to type a URL in the address bar. I finally gave up and had to email her a link. Argh!

[msr986]

Address bar? huh? :)

[Shannon Moore]

Some URLs are easier than others to communicate verbally. And people often enter the wrong separator character (\ instead of /).

At the corp. I used to work at, people referred to the separator character (forward slash, in my vernacular) as a "whack" or "backwhack" which was a little unnerving at first, even though I'd been on on the Net for years when I joined them.

[http] [colon] [whack whack] [double-u double-u double-u] [dot] [somedomainhere] [dot] [com] [whack] ...

I mean, it's a bit tedious even to Net veterans. I almost always email URLs I want folks to check out, rather than wasting my time trying to repeat it over the phone, unless it's just a domain name and extension, rather than a complete URL to a specific page.

[danieljean]

I usually get people to find the location bar, type the domain name only, then press ctrl-enter.

Even people that have been online for years can be stunned at how easy that is- almost as easy as using a search engine! :)

[pixel_juice]

Alt + D is your friend :)

Seriously, keyboard shortcuts [webmasterworld.com] are the way to get around these types of problems - people might not understand what it is you're asking them to do, but nearly everyone can use a keyboard ;)

[danieljean]

Thanks pixel_juice, that's one less thing to explain to people :)

[Macro]

Give them a search term in Google that you come #1 for.
"Company Ltd homepage"

Then they can click on the #1 result in SERPS.

Or, if it's not the homepage, they can try company name + page title in Google.