The Postal Service owns the biggest audience in shipping and monetizes it the least.
usps.com draws roughly twice the traffic of ups.com or fedex.com. Informed Delivery is a 72.9-million-user digital mailbox no competitor can copy. Nearly every moment of that attention is given away free. The OIG’s white paper will ask where the revenue is. We started answering before the bid: a benchmarking instrument covering relevant domestic entities, domestic competitors, checkout friction, and legally screened revenue opportunities, running live on this site and rebuilt against the Statement of Work as amended on August 20.
The asset is attention at national scale. The gap is a monetization layer: no paid tier, no productized returns, an unbranded rate card inside third-party postage platforms, and a daily-habit mailbox sold to mailers but not built out as a channel.
The requirement
Four research notes, all four already moving
The OIG answers research questions 1-3 with internal data. The Supplier owns questions 4-6: benchmarking, UX, and revenue opportunities. Each SOW task below links to its working preview inside Meridian.
T1a · SOW 3.a
Comparison set: up to six relevant domestic entities, with rationale
A proposed set of no more than six domestic entities, public or private, comparable in some way to the Postal Service, each with a brief written rationale for inclusion, delivered in Microsoft Word. Unique visitors is one relevance factor; the SOW invites others, and the rationale is where the analytical work shows.
T1b · SOW 3.a
Research note: USPS digital channels vs. relevant domestic entities
How USPS digital channels compare to the offerings of the entities agreed in Task 1a: available platforms including primary sites, apps, and other channels, and the digital revenue strategies comparators use. Revenue-stream types, not amounts. Max 5 single-spaced pages plus attachments.
T2 · SOW 3.b
Research note: USPS digital channels vs. domestic competitors
Digital offerings from Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and other domestic parcel operators; how competitors monetize their websites; comparison of digital revenue-stream types (not amounts). Max 5 single-spaced pages plus attachments.
T3 · SOW 3.c
Research note: UX of revenue-generating tasks on USPS digital channels
Broad heuristic review (not usability testing, not 508 review) of purchasing postage, stamps, and merchandise on usps.com and the USPS Mobile App; barriers and friction that suppress completion. Capped at 20 percent of the overall budget by the SOW.
Why HSG
What this response demonstrates
The research is already moving
This portal is a working preview of the deliverables: a domestic comparability matrix, a competitor matrix, a scored UX friction register, and a legally screened opportunity register. We started before the bid so the OIG can judge the work, not a promise of work.
Practitioners of the thing being studied
HSG designs, ships, and operates digital products. A UX and monetization review lands differently when the reviewer has built checkout flows and instrumented conversion funnels, not only benchmarked them.
The government-agency screen is built in
Every revenue idea in our register carries a legal-feasibility rating grounded in 39 U.S.C. 404(e), the grandfathered nonpostal services, the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, and the 39 U.S.C. 3641 market-test authority. Task 4 explicitly requires this screen; we treat it as a first-class dimension, not a caveat.
Comparability is treated as the hard question, not a screening step
Amended Task 1a asks which six domestic organisations are comparable to the Postal Service. Ranking by unique visitors would produce a set that looks alike and behaves nothing alike. A chartered entity under a universal service obligation, funded by ratepayers, competing commercially, answerable to an independent regulator, is a specific structure. Our team includes a former Chairman of that regulator and a regulatory economist the European Commission appointed to judge exactly this kind of comparability. The engagement is sized for the published ceiling, with Task 3 held under its 20 percent cap.
For the RISC Research team
Ten minutes in the instrument tells you more than ten pages of promises.
Every matrix cell, friction score, and opportunity rating is a preliminary finding we expect to defend in a kickoff meeting, and to verify and extend under the engagement. That is the standard the research notes would be built to.