A thoughtful and intelligent response. Like the recent critique of the American Airlines website (one of the worst sites on the Internet), the response was basically "we know, but it takes longer to implement than it does to draw". The difference is that Zappos has made some visible progress in the last year, while AA.com has barely changed in five years.

The Zappos guys seem to be thoughtful all-round. A lot of companies sponsor a mile or two of highway, they have something like the last 20 miles heading in to Las Vegas (not sure exactly but I drove in from LA over the summer and I was passing their signs for 20-30 minutes).

In all honesty, I did not consider the two versions of the site to be different enough to create such a big stink over. The second version looks "brighter, glossier", not really better designed. The overall site is still a mess and a jumble. Does anyone honestly scroll all the way to the bottom for either of these? Half the stuff on both versions looks like its doubleclick ads or something.

That was the point Andrew was making with his post, I think.

If a man's design critiques generate a lot of links and discussion but reveal that the author has no concept of the design process of large sites, does his reputation ultimately benefit or suffer. Tune in next time, but my guess is any publicity is good publicity.

I say A/B test the redesign against the current design for one week.

If the redesign gets more sales/conversions than normal, Andrew gets to keep the extra money ... if not, he has to pay the difference :)

That's not a good idea - in my experience launching a redesign almost always causes a dip in conversions for the first couple of weeks before people get used to it and start buying again.

That's exactly why a slow design evolution is better than redesign for big companies.

Despite the fact my comment was mostly tongue in cheek, I don't agree with you–at least not in this sense.

Shoes aren't something that consumers buy every week. New customers to Zappos wouldn't know the difference, and I doubt repeat Zappos customers would be so confused/disoriented as to not make a purchase (or need time to get acclimated).

Slightly Offtopic:

This reminded me of when Facebook did that redesign some months back. A lot of people I know were outraged, but then after about a week or so, they get used to it, and before long, they are back to friending people they arent really friends with. No one rags on the design now. To be honest, I can not even recall what the old design looked like anymore...

Googles slight redesign had the same effect on me. I was displeased at first, but now I'm just used to it and I have moved on with my life.

meh.

the original post to me seemed unnecessary, as does this reply.

Every time I see a post like this or a craigslist redesign, etc I think the exact same thing.

To the Andrew: I didn't know at first I could click on the img and see a full-size page. I was wondering what I was supposed to infer from looking at a "head shot".

I like the original. He removed the shortcuts to "what's new", top sellers etc. That does not seem like an improvement. I've not shopped at Zappos but I use similar links on Newegg all the time.

Just adding gradients and whitespace is not enough to improve a site. :)

But really, Andrew's redesign isn't the point.

He wasn't saying his design was definitely the way to go, he simply took a stab at it as an example.

The points he made in the text of his letter aren't invalidated by any arguable shortcomings of his design.

Also, while you're right that he removed certain front page elements, he specifically said in the text that his design "doesn’t reflect all of the functionality and content currently in the Zeta". The point was to make a general design for the sake of his argument, not to meticulously integrate every single piece of functionality into his design.