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Finally, USPS.com got nice look'n'feel

usps.com

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Re: Finally, USPS.com got nice look'n'feel

#31

Post by jamesbkel »

bnycum wrote: post #25
dpcan wrote: post #10

IMO, the current price of a first-class domestic stamp should be right on the homepage. On Google, in the suggested search box, if you type: "how much is" The first option to come up is "how much is a stamp" I've performed this search myself many times because I don't mail letters often, but when I do, I go to the junk drawer to get a stamp, see a sheet of $0.42 stamps and wonder, "is that how much stamps are?" It's…

That's why I've always got Forever Stamps since they came out. No more worrying.

Actually, as of 2011 all first class USPS postage is non-denominated. So anyone purchasing new stamps should be covered.

Re: Finally, USPS.com got nice look'n'feel

#33

Post by sp332 »

parfe wrote: post #15

The laptop is massively out of place as the largest image on the page. It looks like they're trying to sell me a computer. Plus the computer has an image of the website I'm already looking at. "Watch Video" looks like they're going to talk about the laptop. Then the image scrolls to a woman who is having way too much fun tracking her package. What a weird design. If you search for the word "Post" it comes up in tiny…

Yeah it's like a visual "Yo dawg" joke.

"We heard you liked USPS on your laptop, so we put USPS on a laptop on USPS on your laptop!"

Re: Finally, USPS.com got nice look'n'feel

#34

Post by jhancock »

aresant wrote: post #13

That somebody pushed a redesign through the biggest bureaucracy in the world (that lost $8,200,000,000 in 2010) is astounding. That said: a) They’re using low-contrast call-to-action buttons. It’s a sea of blue. USPS has red/white/blue in the palette – why not use red? b) Their font size selection on many elements & sub-pages is equivalent to 8.5 point, for an audience that skews 35 years + that is a mistake. c) Go c…

I've seen a few articles in the last year pointing out that the diff between the USPS being in the black or the red is the cost of funding health care in its pension system, something Congress mandated a few years back. This past year's funding they had to put aside $5.5 billion, IIRC.

Re: Finally, USPS.com got nice look'n'feel

#37

Post by dandelany »

Well, I like the new look, but they BROKE ALL OF THEIR LINKS and utterly failed to put 301 redirects in place. Google hasn't recrawled the site yet so all links from Google are broken. I just found this out because I'm looking for "media mail" shipping prices, and the first 3 USPS results in Google are all broken. Google will eventually recrawl them, but I'm sure there are many sites all over the web that link to their old pages, which is gonna hurt them bigtime, SEO-wise.

To anyone working on a site redesign: redirecting old URLs is one of those things that is easy to overlook, but it can make a huge difference in the way prospective visitors see your site. Do not neglect this important step.

Edit: also, their new search sucks, which makes the site nearly unusable. Again, I'm trying to find prices for Media Mail, and I know they have an entire page dedicated to it. But if I search media mail, look at these results:

https://www.usps.com/search.htm?q=media%20mail

The first two links aren't even on usps, they're on eBay! If I surround "media mail" with double quotes, I get better results, but naive users are rarely aware of this trick.

Re: Finally, USPS.com got nice look'n'feel

#38

Post by drinian »

bnycum wrote: post #25
dpcan wrote: post #10

IMO, the current price of a first-class domestic stamp should be right on the homepage. On Google, in the suggested search box, if you type: "how much is" The first option to come up is "how much is a stamp" I've performed this search myself many times because I don't mail letters often, but when I do, I go to the junk drawer to get a stamp, see a sheet of $0.42 stamps and wonder, "is that how much stamps are?" It's…

That's why I've always got Forever Stamps since they came out. No more worrying.

When you're mailing something that needs more than one stamp, you still have to know the current value of that Forever Stamp.

That being said, the reason you can't just print postage online for anything but Priority/Express seems to be a really bad deal the USPS made with PitneyBowes.

Re: Finally, USPS.com got nice look'n'feel

#39

Post by emehrkay »

libria wrote: post #36
emehrkay wrote: post #29

I used to work for the company that did this site, AKQA DC, they do great work. This was a HUGE project and took 3.5 years to do.

Do they normally prefer Dojo to jQuery?

I believe that was a requirement by USPS. The guys in the DC office all prefer MooTools over anything else. Check out elderscrolls.com and some of their other sites.

Re: Finally, USPS.com got nice look'n'feel

#40

Post by nanoanderson »

dandelany wrote: post #37

Well, I like the new look, but they BROKE ALL OF THEIR LINKS and utterly failed to put 301 redirects in place. Google hasn't recrawled the site yet so all links from Google are broken. I just found this out because I'm looking for "media mail" shipping prices, and the first 3 USPS results in Google are all broken. Google will eventually recrawl them, but I'm sure there are many sites all over the web that link to the…

Same thing happened to me with the same searches. Their 404 page is not very helpful, and is dynamically generated, which means Goog's spider may not ever realize that the media mail page doesn't exist at that URL any more (see https://www.usps.com/send/waystosendmail/senditwithintheus/m... and look at the URL for an example).
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