I wish this post was the root, because I agree with it more and didn't have time to type it out myself.
I liked the graphical feel of the changes made. Clearly, there's good visual design acumen happening.
But let's take an example, Mr. Designer:
Under search, they have (fairly ugly) little text links for common searches: "shoes", "narrow shoes", "wide shoes."
There's probably a very good reason for that, if they're doing any of the same data-mining that amazon.com does. Likely, users are frequently looking for narrow or wide shoes, but are getting frustrated because they're unsure how to filter for those things.
It's very likely that those text links remove a common obstacle to users purchasing narrow or wide shoes.
In other words, this is a specific example of how your attempt at a redesign would cost zappos money.
I liked the graphical feel of the changes made. Clearly, there's good visual design acumen happening.
But let's take an example, Mr. Designer:
Under search, they have (fairly ugly) little text links for common searches: "shoes", "narrow shoes", "wide shoes."
There's probably a very good reason for that, if they're doing any of the same data-mining that amazon.com does. Likely, users are frequently looking for narrow or wide shoes, but are getting frustrated because they're unsure how to filter for those things.
It's very likely that those text links remove a common obstacle to users purchasing narrow or wide shoes.
In other words, this is a specific example of how your attempt at a redesign would cost zappos money.