

Finally, USPS.com got nice look'n'feel - hippich
https://www.usps.com/

======
dpcan
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 not. But to find
this out, I had to do a search and dig.

HOWEVER, the first place I went was USPS.com, and since it wasn't right on the
homepage, I went to Google instead of trying to browse around their site
aimlessly.

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

~~~
username3
What are Forever Stamps?

[https://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/forever_stamp_f...](https://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/forever_stamp_facts.htm)
is broken. First result on Bing and Google. Google gave me the option to
_Block all www.usps.com results_.

~~~
psadauskas
Its a stamp that costs whatever first class postage is when you buy it, but
it's always good for that, no matter how much the rates go up. So the Forever
stamp you paid $0.44 for now, you can still use it to mail a letter in 5
years, when stamps might be $0.70.

~~~
jamesbkel
Depending on your country and postal service these are also known more
generally as "non-denominated" or "non-value indicator" postage.

------
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.

~~~
nanoanderson
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...](https://www.usps.com/send/waystosendmail/senditwithintheus/mediamail.htm)
and look at the URL for an example).

------
there
i think it looks rather generic, like a web designer just used a pre-made "web
2.0" template. in particular, that light blue color is really overused and
doesn't match the dark blue in their old logo (or are they going for a whole
rebranding thing and losing the traditional dark-blue and red?) the old site
at least had a unique look, even if it did look somewhat dated
([http://web.archive.org/web/20101222000039/http://www.usps.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/20101222000039/http://www.usps.com/)).

it's also a bit strange that it doesn't say "postal service" anywhere except
the <title>. i think more people know of them as the "post office" than
"usps".

~~~
hippich
Probably, because of generic template and generic approach it is so clear
where to look for what you need. generic stuff is not always bad. And this
company do not need that much brand support to get down to colors marches.
Just my IMHO.

------
parfe
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 type in the footer as
"Postage." Not what I'd expect from the Post Office.

~~~
sp332
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!"

------
yumraj
Now only if they can figure out how to accurately track packages. For me their
tracking almost never works (in other words never ever updated), and if it
does it is usually updated after the packages have been delivered, which is
useless.

~~~
mixmastamyk
I believe you have to upgrade the package to Priority Mail or similar to get
UPS-style tracking. Otherwise you'll get simple delivery confirmation.

------
mtogo
An improvement from their last design, but i really don't think it matters.
I've spent maybe 15 minutes total of my life on USPS's homepage. What they
really need to work on is their package tracking[1], which basically has two
states: delivered and not delivered.

[1] Well, and their shipping reliability. Sending packages USPS is about 50/50
for me as to whether it will arrive at all.

EDIT: The 50/50 thing is hyperbole. It's more like 1 in every 10 or 15
packages will disappear.

~~~
kenjackson
_Sending packages USPS is about 50/50 for me as to whether it will arrive at
all._

Seriously? I've sent maybe 100 or so packages with USPS over the past few
years. I don't think a single package hasn't shown up. A few have come in much
later than expected (like a week rather than 3-days), but its one of the most
reliable services I use.

------
ghurlman
Well, they fixed the only thing I ever noticed on the old site... they no
longer have a ZIP code field on the form for looking up a ZIP code by address.
So, there's that.

------
mattparcher
Notably, the locator [1] for post offices (or collection boxes, etc.) is still
unchanged.

My main use-case for this part of the site is to answer the question “where
can I deposit mail and still have it collected today, without driving all the
way to the main office?". The top-level results page only shows business
hours, which do not exist for the collection boxes on the side of the road,
and may even differ from collection times at the official locations. This is
in addition to the lack of any Sort function to use this information.

In general, there could be more information presented, and better organized,
to really take advantage of the space.

[1] <http://usps.whitepages.com/post_office/>

~~~
smackfu
And the hold mail pages are still the same:
<https://holdmail.usps.com/holdmail/landingView.do>

------
aresant
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 check out <http://mobile.usps.com/> \- for usability which do you
prefer?

I wonder how much conversion rate optimization could help close their funding
gap . . .

~~~
jhancock
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.

------
emehrkay
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.

~~~
libria
Do they normally prefer Dojo to jQuery?

~~~
emehrkay
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.

------
smackfu
Only the homepage was redesigned. It seems like all the pages off of it, where
you actually do stuff, are unchanged. Like the calculate shipping page, or the
store.

The shipping calculator has the particular annoyance of requiring you to
provide a bunch of info that is often unnecessary. To/from ZIP code for first
class letters?

------
dhechols
To me, it looks shiny, new, and somewhat useless. Screw those DHTML menus.

The best parts of this redesign are the search bar in the top right and the
bottom link area. Everything else looks like Fisher Price Theme (tm). Still,
it's miles better than the old one, which looked like the chaos of a mailroom
itself.

------
ericfrenkiel
For a government website, this looks really good. As many have mentioned,
incorporating red into buttons and the like would work better to draw the eye.

------
glimcat
Dissenting opinion, it looks like it just got hacked by phishers.

------
sitkack
And they broke all the links on their site, thanks dudes.

------
fuzionmonkey
Where's the red? It looks cleaner but generic.

------
georgieporgie
It looks basically the same as the old site, and their pricing still
absolutely sucks: Too many options, all with basically the same name, and they
go out of their way to conceal the cheaper shipping while showing the
expensive options. Also, the country selector is broken under Chrome. A
classic case of rebranding instead of addressing existing issues.

------
neuroelectronic
Did they hire Apple for this?

------
mattsilv
The estimated cost of the website: $30 billion USD.

~~~
davty
[citation needed]

