Stop telling people what will or won't irritate others right off the bat. There's no better way to wrongly speak for someone else. :)
More seriously, it's probably a good bet that most people haven't heard of McMaster Carr in general, and if they have, probably not in the context of having a smart or well designed website. So it's not a terrible article headline. And of all the click bait style headlines that could be used, it's probably the least offensive. At least they give you the name in the headline.
McMaster Carr is probably the most famous industrial supplier in North America. It's a $1.3 billion company that's been in business for over a century. Anyone who makes physical stuff probably goes on their website multiple times per day. I currently have 17 different McMaster tabs open.
It's fine if your personal experience has never lead you to encounter this site, and it's fine to remark on your unique perspective as someone observing it not as a user but as an admirer. But the presumption that others share your ignorance is at best impolite, and the suggestion that some may be irritated should be taken as useful criticism, because plenty are.
Even if “anyone who makes physical stuff” has heard of them, manufacturing jobs represent 12.8 million jobs[1] compared to 158 million non-farm jobs[2]. That’s 8% of the workforce. Let’s double that to account for people that used to work in manufacturing or are in maker hobbies and the like. Even at 16% I would comfortably stand by the assertion that most people have not heard about McMaster Carr’s website being a very high functioning web site.
Well by that logic, there are 4.4 million software developers, much less than half the employment of manufacturing, in the US. Should we introduce stack overflow as a website you've never heard of? I'm sure plenty of people haven't heard of it, but I wouldn't assume any particular person hasn't.
> Should we introduce stack overflow as a website you've never heard of?
Yes? Obviously who you're writing for matters. I wouldn't write an article specifically targeted at and submitted to software developers and use that for a title, but I would absolutely have no problem at all introducing Stack Overflow as a site you haven't heard of (or maybe I'd qualify it as "probably haven't heard of) if writing something for a general audience. It's a safe bet that most people you talk to wouldn't have heard of Stack Overflow, so there's nothing wrong with a headline for a broad audience that assumes that.
Would you object to a headline for an article written for a general audience that calls "lwn.net" a site you haven't heard of? Or maybe an article that calls Admiral Grace Hopper a computer pioneer you haven't heard of? Sure everyone on this site almost certainly has heard of them. But in the general public?
More seriously, it's probably a good bet that most people haven't heard of McMaster Carr in general, and if they have, probably not in the context of having a smart or well designed website. So it's not a terrible article headline. And of all the click bait style headlines that could be used, it's probably the least offensive. At least they give you the name in the headline.