I'm Andrew, the guy who did it. The key thing that I want to drive home is that their execution stinks. I figure they know how to sell their product - they did $1 billion in sales last year - but the site itself is incredibly sloppy.
-Andrew
1 - A design does not exist in a vacuum. It is there to do something (in this case, sell shoes). It is impossible to separate good design from its contextual purpose - and in this case he is suggesting that you are (apparently) unqualified to fairly judge Zappos' design, not being from a sales background and all. Assuming you don't have sales experience, I would be inclined to agree.
2 - Zappos' purpose is to make money selling shoes. Would your UI push more sales? If so, then there's cause to look at your design. If your UI will decrease sales, then why in the flipping world would anyone consider your design? There is also no such thing as "no difference" - all UI changes, however minor, impact conversion and sales.
Personally I object to the presumptuous and condescending tone that this redesign is done in - you're assuming that Zappos is staffed by a team of idiots who couldn't care less about clean web UI. I don't work for Zappos, but given their success (and their site) I highly doubt this is the case. Making something web-2.0 does not automatically make it better.
I also happen to agree with OP that the testimonials are annoying and interrupt flow - customers are here to look at the store's offerings, not hear testimonials. Put it somewhere less intrusive. If I walk into a restaurant, I'd expect to hear about the menu - not what their ratings is on Yelp. The testimonial is also so often abused by nefarious ne'er-do-goods that its mere presence raises suspicion in users.
Your search box also removes functionality by completely tossing out search parameters - which IMHO demonstrates your lack of consideration for the specifics business requirements of the company (something many UX people do but will never own up to). The "search by" feature I would gather is very important to shoe buyers.
This post is already getting long, but I need to hit another point: you started your entire post with a very confrontational "why is your website a confusing mess"?
And then you fail to make any meaningful changes to the UI. The tab-based navigation is identical save for some padding and sizing changes. The product selection columns are identical. The search box is identical save for your decision to remove search features. The general layout is identical, in fact, save for your decision to add in the testimonials - how does this reduce confusion, exactly?
If you're going to make loud, bold-letter claims about the confusion inherent in a design, at least make the effort to change the design, as opposed to give it a slick font-and-button-texture makeover?
Final design is a compromise between pure design aesthetics, usability, conversion, site speed, SEO, branding, etc. For the larger business' stake, stakeholders in all of these disciplines need their voice to be heard.
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.
The redesigned front page makes customers navigate to one of the category links or to perform a search before they encounter any actual products.
The attempt to simplify the UI and the focus on the company's culture may be good ideas when you're offering a service, but aren't really appropriate for a retail site.
Compare Zappos other successful online retailers, such as Amazon, Buy.com, etc. and you will see similar busy layouts, and pages designed to draw the eye to product offers instead of "this is why we're special" commentary.
"their execution stinks" vs "they know how to sell their product"
Keep in mind also that the Apple Store sucks at discoverability for non-Apple products - Apple does a marvellous job funnelling you towards the MacBooks and iPods, but a poor job exposing, say, third-party accessories. This works great for Apple, but would be instant death for a company whose entire bread and butter is selling third party goods.
Now consider that Apple has how many core products? What you see on the root store page is it. Everything Apple makes and sells is right there. Now compare with how many products Zappos is in charge of selling and you start seeing the scale difference.
You are comparing apples (no pun intended) and oranges.
I get where Andrew is coming from here. Zappos' website feels insanely old and I'm sure many people get turned away because of the design and never get a chance to know how awesome zappos as a company really is.
ie. My mom would sign up for Facebook.com before she touched MySpace, even if she didn't know the difference between them, just because of the better facebook design and execution on the sign-up page.
On the other hand, they're really well known and continue to grow and what the majority of you are arguing is 'why touch it if it works?' Which is the wrong way to look at it. You should be asking 'how can I make this a better experience for my customers?'