This is a good point, but it doesn't invalidate the premise. The first sites to use bootstrap and this particular brochure template truly stood out. And today, with everyone using it, it still works okay, well enough to be a bona fide standard, but it of course doesn't work nearly as well as it did for those early adopters.

What I'm saying is, the next big thing, for marketing in particular, may very well be derided in this same "Hey look..." manner after it takes off in popularity, but the pioneers of that next big thing are going to reap serious profits.

this is a good analogy, in that some supermarkets feel soulless, whereas others feel really cozy, even though ultimately they both have aisles with stuff on shelves. it's like the difference between someone using a template versus making something by hand. there's a human feel to the latter.

I think you both have a good point. I guess it depends on what your relationship you have with food. Do you prefer your shopping experience to be predictable and efficient or do you like to discover something new and exciting.

Realistically, most people who browse the web don't care too much about website design and just want something reasonably functional that's not too ugly.

Supermarkets really need to get with the times. I mean, barcodes? Please. It's like they're not even trying.

Seriously. We're soooo over 1-d barcodes. Need to get a QR code on all that stuff. MMmmmmm.... Fiducial markers - that's hot

brb patenting higher dimensional barcodes / tensor barcodes

Finally, we can use holograms for something mundane!

Pretty neat. You can encode 100 megabytes of data in a 4x4x4x4 cm tesseract, just need to apply an appropriate rotation around two of its axes and then you can extract the information as it intersects with 3d space.

That adds an additional temporal component to the scanning process which makes me hesitant.

However, the idea is ridiculous enough to greenlight.

Just go full panopticon with a thousand cameras, so that the looters don't need to put in all that selfie effort.

That’s Amazon Go.

They usually use 2D barcodes for weighed items at the deli.

I mean you joke, but a local sports good store has switched to using RFID tags for all their products. First time I went shopping after the change was rather startling. I dumped my purchases at the cash register and almost immediately the cashier read me the total.

I see no reason supermarkets couldn't do similar once this sort of tech gets prolific enough.

afaik some of them use quite cool tech - fully automated sensors for just about anything plugged up to complex workflows and whatnot

And every apartment building, and every fast food restaurant... Why Everywhere in the US is Starting to Look the Same: https://youtu.be/UX4KklvCDmg

If you're in the burbs. There's a reason sprawl sucks

I love my little patch in the burbs.

or restaurants with plates

Plates are sooooo 2010's if my food isn't served on a wooden board or a tile I'm not even interested.

A supermarket isn't designed to sell you on a product.

They are literally designed to make you buy products. The milk in the back corner is the most famous example so that you have to pass by as much product as possible to get it and have less chance of not impulse buying. End caps…all the candy right next to the checkout lane, etc.

I guess I worded it incorrectly. My point was that it's two completely different ways of selling you things. Supermarkets use all these techniques to subconsciously make you buy more things, but they rarely try to sell you a singular product.

Product websites actively try to distinguish themselves, to make you feel that the product is unique and convince you it'll make your life better. Having the same style of website for every product ever feels like something that'd actively go against the goal of the website. After all, if two things look the same, why would I pick one over the other?

As a previous bagger boy gone stocker gone high-as-a-kite meat dept clerk, the milk is in the back because it is stocked from a walk-in fridge. People don't even buy much milk.

Or you can just walk past the deli and the bread section, like I do at my local Safeway.

...what do you think they're for?

I... I'm awe struck by this comment..

I've been an active reader of HN for 5 years and this has to by far be the most wrong comment I have ever seen. Absolutely bone-headed.

Believe me, you're not even trying if that's the most bone-headed comment you've seen on here.

I mean, there are certainly bonehead comments. Any time Jan 6 comes up, conspiracy theorists will come out of the woodwork and say it was a false flag operation done by Antifa or the Deep State. Nearly anything supporting NFTs is bone-headed.

But this one was just baffling on another level. Like...what do you think supermarkets exist for? Just for people to look around and go "Neat! They put a whole chicken in a can!"?[0]

[0] There actually IS a supermarket like that though. It's called Omega Mart, and it's a tourist attraction in Las Vegas. They sell weird shit like a household cleaning spray called "Who Told You This Was Butter? Seriously, Don't Eat This", "Emergency Clams", and a laundry detergent called "Plausible Deniability". But even in the case of Omega Mart, you can still buy all the products.

Supermarkets are literally designed to sell you on products. Every single product placement is from a planogram meant to juice the sales per sqft of space, from which aisle the item appears to which row and where within the row it’s positioned.