HUD cuts 90% of its website content, citing low traffic and poor user experience

“The new HUD.gov embodies these qualities and continues to build on our pledge to be mission-minded and fulfill our statutory responsibilities while efficiently and effectively providing vital information to the American public.”

Turner contends that the website redesign will save taxpayer money and “reflects years of feedback and analysis from the American people.”

Last year, the office of the department’s chief financial officer and its customer and design experience teams undertook an assessment of HUD’s website alongside its “Digital Experience Working Group,” which was comprised of representatives from every program office. The work included user experience research, traffic analysis and the launch of a website feedback survey.

HUD shared some of the findings in its announcement of the new website’s launch.

“Nearly half of the respondents to HUD’s 2024 feedback survey were unsatisfied with HUD.gov,” the department stated. “Additionally, less than 5% of HUD.gov’s total pages made up 80% of all web traffic, yet the website had 9,200 web pages, 123,000 documents, and 19 program office microsites, each with its own separate confusing navigation.”

This made the site “bloated with redundant, outdated and disorganized content,” the department said, and it encumbered the user experience for those seeking to effectively navigate it.

“The new website features about a 90% reduction in content from the previous website, with information organized into three easy-to-navigate categories: Helping Americans, HUD Partners, and Researchers,” the announcement stated.

“With the launch of the new HUD.gov website and a consolidation of services, we’ve identified more than $400,000 in savings to the American taxpayer.”

The navigation is more straightforward, but a cursory glance also reveals some omissions.

The new “HUD Partners” section, for example, includes a breakout for the department’s single-family division that appears to be easier to navigate. But the included links to all but one listed single-family program return a 403 error, indicating that the server denied a user’s request to access a specific link.

The only single-family program that did not return a 403 error at the time of this writing is mortgage insurance for disaster victims. A 403 error does not indicate on its own that a link has been deleted or the navigation request cannot be completed due to a factor like a broken link — only that the server is denying access to a particular resource.

The single-family partner page also no longer includes a dedicated section for Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-insured mortgage servicing. The website for the National Servicing Center remains accessible via its existing web address.

HUD has been on a yearslong road to modernize its technology systems. A 2021 report submitted to the HUD Office of the Inspector General (OIG) stated that progress at that point had been notable but that “leadership changes with shifting priorities and insufficient funding pose potential risk to modernization.”