Is it worth using "pretty URLs" if you don't care about SEO/SEM

Question

I'm designing a hosted software-as-a-service application that's like a highly specialized version of 37Signal's Highrise product. In that context, where SEO is a non-issue, is it worth implementing "pretty URLs" instead of going with numeric IDs (e.g. customers/john-smith instead of customers/1234)? I notice that a lot of web applications don't bother with them unless they provide a real value (e.g. e-commerce apps, blogs - things that need SEO to be found via search engines)

Answer 1

Depends on how often URLs are transmitted verbally by its users. People tend to find it relatively difficult to pronounce something like

http://www.domain.com/?id=4535&f=234&r=s%39fu__

and like

http://www.domain.com/john-doe

much better ;)