Redesigned US Mint Web Site - Horrid

Reminder that the US Mint does not run the web site. PFS Web does. https://govtribe.com/vendors/priori...fs-web-3rtq4

Websites and software are often designed around features or products, not around user tasks. That's an inevitable result of design-by-committee, especially after you involve the marketing and advertising folks. Almost all people who work on a system are not actual users of the system, and so they never really understand the various intentions of real users interacting with their system.

A lot of that also has to do with metrics and their misapplication. Marketing gets very excited about interactions—because interactions are perceived to be opportunities for sales and upselling—not realizing that inefficient designs produce way more interactions, but also lower sales chances due to user frustration.

TL;DR: authoring useful websites is hard. =P

I agree that the website redesign is horrid. The entire product schedule should be viewable in a single click, not eight clicks (I bookmarked this link to get around that).

But that inconvenience pales in comparison to the scrubbing of historical information and photos from the new website. The Commemorative Coins page is an example. Whereas before they had separate pages for every commemorative program, now they only have pages for the three most recent programs, and even those three have considerably less information than they did under the old website! Meanwhile, much of the historical information about and photos of past coin programs and types are gone.

The redesign gets an F in my book.

I'll note that to access all the missing information, I use the Wayback Machine. It's very sluggish and cumbersome, but it offers a fun way to explore the Mint's past websites and products. Also on a different subject, I seem to recall a thread from @CelticKnot looking for old Mint product codes, and the Wayback Machine would be a good source for those.

As someone who is a marketer, it seems to me the site has been redesigned to maximize SEO (search engine optimization). We've had to make changes to our corporate site that are similar - they don't help the user experience. The reality is you need to get folks to the website first.

So focus some of your angst toward Alphabet (Google).

Hrm. I don't think that causing more website impressions should come at a cost of usability. Otherwise you are trading slightly more traffic for a lowered probability of completing a sale (which is the real point of the website).

What about the redesign would make it better for SEO?

The website is the website. Most modern technology is unreliable and not designed to be at all user friendly. Most of it approaches worthless in my book.

That being said, my only issue in 2025 beyond this with the Mint is that their so-called loyalty program for "free" budget postage has never engaged with my account. I no longer order anything from them that was not already on my subscription. Four plus months into 2025 and it remains broke. That is the lot I get for living in this technological age.

So not ordering anything from the mint saves having to work with a website, and since virtually all websites are designed by millennials with no grasp of reality or common sense, this web site does not stick out as worse than any other.

Redesign sucks but what is even worse is that CCAC meeting is no longer on the main page. You have to click the "Whats New" tab and scroll down. In the past they gave you brief summaries of meetings and pictures that were presented for coin/medal design. Now they just give you the minutes and a link to their youtube video for the full 1hr meeting. That is my biggest issue with the new update.

Interesting commentary and thanks for absorbing my rant, everyone.

At the time of my rant, I had *just* visited the web site and all I wanted to do was find out info on the upcoming privied 2025 ASEs, which there is none (like release date). It took 3 minutes of clicking "show more" on the upcoming releases page to get to the products I wanted to see to find the not-yet-available info. It is what it is; I understand that info isn't available yet, but it really would have been nice to find that out in 30 seconds vs 3 minutes.

I think this horrible web UI design trend even applies to captive audiences in the corporate environment. I'm talking about giants like ServiceNow and Workday. Why would you make things so cryptic and unintuitve for people that are paying you gobs of money for your software? Yes I know the/several answer(s).



I don't see how that's relevant in this case, unless people were fleeing by the thousands, becuase there were already plenty of people shopping the site (2019 ERP and 2020 v70, anyone?). Once upon a time I went to the US mint site weekly or more but now I couldn't care less about the site, just like they do. I have most of the products I want already coming to me on subscription. If I could put the privy ASEs on subs I would to avoid having to deal with navigating this mess. I'm really looking forward to the next survey that pops up when I visit the Mint site next.

In addition I do realize that clicks are revenue in a lot of cases and that clowns (ahem, "customers") like me that prefer to browse from a PC-based web browser are likely dwindling / aging out.

Darn, I just ranted again. [/rant] I promise I'm done this time. It's not worth the keystrokes.



Thanks @Morgans Dad. I just needed a deep breath.