deleting parts of the url to get to the page above

Question

Imagine a situation where there is site with urls

somesite.com/events

which is a list of events

and

somesite.com/events/event-name

which is a detail of particular event.

Now due to some technical limitations, it would be better to have a slightly different url for the detail, particularly

somesite.com/event/event-name

notice the missing s.

Now the worry of some of our team members are, that there is actually a situation, where user sees the detail url(somesite.com/events/event-name) on the web/facebook/whatever and instead of going directly to that url, he deletes the /event-name part, hoping to get to the list of events.

Do you think is situation is worth considering? Does a considerable number of users behave this way?

Answer 1

Well, first of all, I'd seriously consider using another logic that implements non confusing, semantic URLs. Assuming this is not possible, I'd recommend you to track your user's behavior and see what happens.

Nevertheless, the solution for your problem is quite simple: just use htacces to redirect any user that hits somesite.com/event/ to somesite.com/events/ and you'll have all bases covered.

Then again, try working out your non-semantic URLs first, and track your user's behaviors so you can have an accurate view of what's going on with your site

Answer 2

This kind of falls into the 'flexibility and efficiency of use' heuristic from Nielsen Norman Group's heuristics. Their definition for this heuristic is:

Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

If a person knows enough to navigate a site that way I think you should allow it. I personally do try to navigate sites like this when I'm unfamiliar with them and love it. I have seen other more "experienced users" do this as well. Just through personal interaction, no research on this on my end.

Answer 3

For the lack of overhead that is involved in modern web application frameworks like spring Rails or asp.net I would add another route that redirects users there to mitigate this problem. I dont see any negative effects of having both routes active and its like 5-25 minutes of work to do it. It seems like a win win unless I am missing any risks.

For example I cant think of what yourdomain.com/event would map to , i could see yourdomain.com/event/{id} mapping to something but having event and events redirecting to the same place to eliminate user issues seems like a good idea for minimal work.

If the way in which you are coding your site is different where this isnt a minimal "Do it" then put it in the same process where you identify and rank requirements to eventually place it somewhere in your backlog.

Answer 4

Responses i'm seeing so far are looking to only to "make it work" for now. URIs will stay - so when designing them try to make it work even after a site re-design/re-structure in the future.

I share the concerns of your team mates, We can't expect an ideal way user would interact with the site, but we can make the site function ideally for any user.

Consider the grammar like this -

somesite.com/{type}/{child-id}

The {child-id} could be referring to anything random when paired with the {type}, but {type} is pretty-much static in every cases. So it is only natural that if a user assume {child-id} as a subset of {type} and treat it as such.

The key to avoid a confusion is to define the grammar early on while designing the URIs, how you want the user to perceive the path structure of the site.

So, I would re-think using two different strings for {type}, one plural and another singular for the language's sake, while {type} is expected to be static.

---

Tim-Lee on Cool URIs http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html

gov.uk on Designing URI sets for the UK public sector » https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/designing-uri-sets-for-the-uk-public-sector