Stephen Buckner, Center for New Media and Promotions, U.S. Census Bureau
The U.S. Census Bureau has launched a newly redesigned census.gov homepage.
This is the first of several steps in a progressive series of enhancements to census.gov over the next year to make our content more accessible, useful, comprehensible and interesting to the broadest possible audience. Our goal is to make it easier for visitors to reach their desired destination, increase user satisfaction, and expand the public’s understanding of how the Census Bureau measures America’s people, places and economy.
Some of the new features and tools users will experience are:
- A prominent dashboard featuring our economic indicators
- A top dropdown menu for quick navigation to key topics
- A new interactive map showing a mash up of economic and demographic statistics
- A “Stat of the Day” highlighting Census Bureau statistics across all the data we collect
- A “mega footer” with links categorized under familiar topics and highly trafficked pages
- A feature for users to provide feedback
- More prominent placement of our latest releases
We hope the public will gain greater accessibility to our statistics through both their desktops and mobile devices. Also, users will eventually see improved search and navigation, thematic pages and additional features.
If you have any comments, please click on the “Tell us what you think” section on the homepage.
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Congratulations on a nice redesign!
I was just wondering how the global navigation on the top is different from the mega footer. Many of the menu items seem repetitive. Is that intentional?
Can the Census main web page list the “American Community Survey” under the “Data” pull-down menu? Why are links to the “American Community Survey” so hard to find? This is one of your most important data sets.
Also, where is the “Tell us what you think” section of your homepage? I was seeking to submit feedback about the designed, but didn’t find anything under “contact us” except for social media links…
absolutely horrible job. i can’t find anything.
I honestly think this is a really bad decision. “If it ain’t broke… don’t fix it!” I cannot find anything… what used to take me 5 minutes to find and download now takes me an hour. The new Quickfacts site is extremely confusing. I have been using the census site for over 4 years quite smoothly and now I feel like I have to learn everything all over again. I am very disappointed with this change. Not user friendly at all.
You should have just increased the capacity without changing methodology. The new format is extremely cumbersome and user UNfriendly.
I concur with most earlier comments. The previous iteration of American Factfinder worked really well, but 2 is unnecessarily complicated. Search results pop up in illogical windows, and some of the instructions seem to put you in an endless loop. Trying to teach it to students and faculty – especially during this data transition – is a nightmare.
I have been using select census data tables for over 10 years and now can’t find anything. This learning curve is going to cost me lots of time and it’s going to hurt my business.