How the UPS Site Should Look
This afternoon, in a fit of frustration, I sat down and remade the website for UPS as I would like to see it remade. That is, how it should be remade to best serve the principal need of the customers.
Creating this little monster took about 5 minutes, but quickly spread around the web design community via Twitter with a little help from popular blogger Brian Hoff and the community site Smashing Magazine. So I thought it fitting I actually blog it so it becomes “permanent” and maybe directs people back here.
Someone keen already pointed out that I included a scroll bar. I admit, that’s just a vestigial feature left over from the screenshot process. Perhaps I’ll take care of that in a later revision, and actually tackle the logistics of having a site that is more minimal than Google, if you can believe such a thing. For example, I should probably have a link to switch languages, and some place to log in for general use. And the copyright info, etc.
But this is a philosophical redesign, so it doesn’t have to make complete sense.
// a tale of brands & branding, design: web, the industry, the internet
// 8 Comments »
// 09 January 2010, 00:12
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Prescott Perez-Fox, Robert Dumas. Robert Dumas said: RT @scottperezfox: New blog post: How the UPS Site Should Look http://www.perezfox.com/2010/01/08/how-the-ups-site-should-look/ [...]
// 09 January 2010, 21:08
the idea is very solid. the common user generally only goes to the site to track their stuff so having it up front and not dressed up, caters to the reality of that.
// 10 January 2010, 01:41
Ha! Nice work. I spotted this on Twitter, and found my way here. I’ll have to show this to everyone on Monday.
Thanks for the ideas.
// 11 January 2010, 09:56
Printed and hanging at my desk. Thank you.
// 11 January 2010, 14:28
The badge is too big
// 13 January 2010, 19:45
Brilliance in simplicity….
// 27 January 2010, 16:32
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// 20 February 2010, 02:32
I can’t help but think this is remarkably similar to Dustin Curtis’ redesign of American Airline’s site, in that doesn’t take into account UPS’s actual business needs. It’s way off base and nothing but fanciful in that regard. People tracking packages are not UPS’s customers, because the people tracking are not the people who paid to insert the packages into the UPS system. The vast majority of UPS’s customers are the various merchants and businesses that ship substantial quantities of packages, and this design therefore completely ignores UPS’s actual market. I’m not sure why you would go to the UPS website to track a package anyways—doesn’t everyone just paste the number into Google and click the link?