

You're Killing Me, Zappos - metalab
http://metalabdesign.com/zappos/

======
maxklein
This redesign is what happens when a designer dabbles in sales without
understanding what he is doing. The original zappos site does not have massive
and obvious sales pitches, and the redesign brings in two huge and annoying
sales pitches.

Just because you know how to style html and use photoshop does not mean you
are an expert in selling goods to customers. This designer just added two huge
banners that will likely lose the company a large amount of money.

Testimonials are turn-offs. Don't put two huge testimonials at the top of the
page, your website looks then like an advert. And people don't love companies
that are trying to force a product down their throat.

This redesign actually makes me angry - it's rare that a redesign has this
ability to do that. So, designer, if the aim of your redesign was to create
customer rage, then feel free to touch your nipples in ecstasy, because you
succeeded.

~~~
metalab
Hey Max,

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

~~~
potatolicious
You're missing the OP's point, which (not to put words in the OP's mouth) is:

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?

~~~
Gormo
Also notice that the redesign removes the featured products from the front
page. Zappos carefully selected these with the intention of driving conversion
directly from the landing page.

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.

------
TravisLS
Maybe I'm missing something, but let's summarize the changes:

\- De-emphasized search, which is probably the way that at least 50% of the
users navigate the site.

\- Added a customer testimonials banner that should and would be immediately
overlooked by everyone who visits the site, but pushes the product categories
down. You're right that the site should have a clear visual hierarchy, but the
product categories in this case should be at the top of that hierarchy, not
the bottom.

\- Added a second brand navigation - I'm not sure why.

\- Removed all of the quick links to most popular products, etc. People who
scroll down this far on the page have not found what they were looking for in
your main product nav, and don't believe they can find it in search. There's
no reason to show them a bunch of brands here - rather, zappos' understated
text links give them an alternative way to navigate that is clearly lower in
the hierarchy. Additionally, i suspect SEO is of major importance to Zappos,
so having a link to "wide shoes" on the home page is probably rather
important.

\- Expanded the section about culture. This would be nice on a site that sold
services like an agency site or mailchimp or some such, but is unnecessary
with zappos. Most people come to the site looking for a product, not looking
to comparison shop retailers.

All that said, your design is more visually appealing. I just wish it had
accompanied a post called "My Interesting Alternate Take On The Zappos
Homepage" and not "You're Killing Me, Zappos".

~~~
timcederman
Also:

Broke the alphabetical brand index control. (too much non-functional
whitespace now).

Just way too much header stuff in the redesign too. Pushing content down the
page is crazy.

I did like the way the phone number was given a better call-out.

------
jbrun
Not sure his design is much better, actually I prefer the original. Look at
Amazon, ugly as shit and works amazingly.

~~~
jmtame
This exact same argument was being shouted from the rooftops by the people who
claimed MySpace would always be better than Facebook, and clean design didn't
matter. Everyone thought they could get away with lack of structure and threw
their hands up in the air when it came to things like "usability" and
"aesthetics." I wrote about this on Go BIG Network before Facebook traffic
surpassed MySpace's, and I see the same thing going on here.

I understand most of you out there are programmers, some of you may not share
the level of appreciation that i do for things that can look nice and are
usable--but this guy's design is vastly better than what they've got now.
Kudos for his work.

~~~
potatolicious
_"I understand most of you out there are programmers, so you share very little
appreciation for things that can look nice and clean"_

Hey now, careful with the blanket statements. Some of us hackers actually _do_
care deeply about usability and aesthetics, but "clean" doesn't always mean
"better" - despite many UX people's unfounded insistence.

I work for a company that shall remain unnamed, but we do a ridiculous amount
of testing for every little UI change. Conversions, sales, and a whole
ridiculous slew of variables are tracked in extensive A/B testing for every UI
design.

Our app doesn't look like much, but it's also the proven design - and we have
the numbers to back it up.

I'm all for usability and aesthetics, but when you're arguing that your clean-
looking design, which follows all the usability theories in the book, is
better than one with a long track record of successful metrics, you better
have some numbers of your own.

In the end Zappos' business is not clean, pretty UI. It's generating sales. If
clean, responsive, usable UI leads to that (and it most certainly does -
within reason), then they ought to do that. If it doesn't, then it'd be a
dogmatic waste of resources that can be very damaging to the company.

~~~
jmtame
I would bet money that if Zappos implemented this design and measured customer
satisfaction on the web site in addition to perceived brand value, both would
improve.

Clean is always going to help. You have businesses who will be successful no
matter what, because for some reason or another they nailed another part of
their business model (such as distribution). But to defend a bad design is a
cop out, I'll bet that with all things equal, the better designed web site
(both usability and aesthetics) will always win.

~~~
potatolicious
_"You can't just say "Amazon is ugly and it works.""_

And I'm not. I'm saying "Amazon is ugly and it works. We have teams of Web-2.0
guys doing redesigns on every facet of the site day-in-day-out, testing with
live customers constantly, and this is still currently the best design - and
we are still iterating."

A bit of a mouthful, though.

 _"I'm sure they could measurably prove that customer satisfaction on the web
site and perceived brand value would both increase."_

That's just it though. Where I work, we have _proven_ numerically that this is
a false assumption. "I'm sure they could prove" is a far cry from "We have
proven". This is a problem that is prevalent throughout the UX community I
think - a dogmatic worship of several principles without ever sanity-testing
your assumptions with large-scale metrics, instead focusing on ephemeral and
unreliable things like anecdotal user stories.

"It looks like it works better" and "it works better" are entirely two
different beasts. One thing you can say off-hand, the other requires backup.

For what it's worth, I was on your side at one time. I hated "dirty"
90s-looking websites like eBay, Amazon, et al, and I loved the new-age
Web-2.0-y stuff.

Then I got this job and got a sneak peek into what the user data actually
says. Some things defy common logic - or at the very least, user experience
design common logic.

~~~
sokoloff
(I had to look at your profile to see if you worked where I do. I don't think
you do, but it's hard to say.)

It's absolutely amazing what wins in A/B testing sometimes. Like the parent
poster, we do split-run testing continuously and consistently. I often have my
own pre-conceived notions of what will win or lose big, and am often proven
wrong by the people that matter: the ones out on the interwebs buying our
products.

Side, but related, note: watching customers interact with your site in a
facilitated session is also very informative (bordering on mind-blowing
sometimes). In our new building, we built a specific lab for this, but we used
to and you could easily do it via closed-circuit TV. We've found that having
one facilitator in the room with the customer (past customer or in our market
but not familiar with the site) and the rest of the observers out of sight
(but disclosed to the participant beforehand) works the best.

(Many) People think that computers are magic devices, following no discernable
rules or patterns. We've had users try to drag this "thing" over there for 3+
minutes (an eternity when you are watching them struggle) and when it finally
works they are giddy with a sense of accomplishment and report "I don't know
why it finally worked; it's magic!" but they aren't pissed off in any way.
(Obviously, we work to improve this experience, but my point is: what you, as
a competent accomplished computer user, expect, prefer, want or will tolerate
doesn't trump what Joe Main Street wants/expects if he's in your target market
more than the readers of HN.)

Take a spin around our website and you may very well see 10 design WTFs, 7 of
which likely have statistically significant test results backing them, 2 of
which are in test right now, and 1 of which we don't know about or aren't yet
testing.

~~~
justinchen
Not as scientific as A/B testing actual conversions, but here's what some
people think of the 2 designs. Still collecting answers, but so far a slight
preference for the original Zappos site.

<http://pickfu.com/F7C7WI>

~~~
potatolicious
Skimming through user comments I see a lot of people pointing out that the
original design showed _more shoes_ than the redesign. This is a key point
that the redesign author missed completely - Zappos sells shoes, you can't
make a shoe-selling website and then spend more time talking about company
culture than shoes.

Also interesting are users who point out that the original site has less
"ads". People don't see testimonials and "how Zappos rocks" as insightful,
they see them as obtrusive advertisements.

------
richcollins
There really isn't a substantive difference. The navigation is pretty much the
same. The "Our Customers Love Us" is annoying and distracting. If anyplace, it
should be at checkout, not when you are navigating.

I think that our co-founder, Steve Dekorte, did an awesome job creating a
truly innovative design for our shopping site: <http://stylous.com/>

------
KevinMS
Clearly, having hundreds of _perfectly_ aligned, glossy and drop-shadowed
images makes for a much better user experience.

Will this be done in Flash or HTML 7? Giant image maps?

Props for putting a gradient on absolutely everything.

~~~
metalab
No, you're right. We shouldn't push the boundaries of what we can do on the
web, we should always stick to the browser defaults.

Any competent front-end designer could easily figure out how to code this.

~~~
ackattack
Funny, because nearly all of your designs/apps use the same
button/gradient/image/border/Gotham/arrow themes for nearly every single UI
element. Not saying this is such a bad thing, but it's certainly not pushing
any boundaries.

Honestly, I find their new "Zeta" website to be a tremendous improvement that
was probably researched heavily by a design team. Basically you took that
design, added a couple gradients and pretty icons, and called it "better".

It looks pretty, but did you ever think that maybe that's not /really/ what
matters to them?

"All that said, your design is more visually appealing. I just wish it had
accompanied a post called "My Interesting Alternate Take On The Zappos
Homepage" and not "You're Killing Me, Zappos"."

------
whirlycott1
I don't meant to self-promote, but I'm the founder and CTO of StyleFeeder and
we've recently launched some new browsing functionality... so if you're into
shoes, we have the whole Zappos collection and a whole lot more available
here. I'd be happy to get any feedback from y'all:

[http://www.stylefeeder.com/explorer#/Shoes/m///2-10///variet...](http://www.stylefeeder.com/explorer#/Shoes/m///2-10///variety,none/)

~~~
davidw
Why's this getting voted down? Nothing wrong with promoting something you
worked hard on. It's clear from this person's account that he's a regular
contributor here, not just a one-off spam link. And it is relevant to the
topic at hand.

~~~
stanleydrew
If you want feedback on your product, don't you think an "Ask HN: Please
Review" is more appropriate than derailing this thread? And it's clearly self-
promoting, despite the "I don't mean to self-promote..." disclaimer.

~~~
davidw
Self promotion is fine. If you don't believe in what you do, who else will?
One shouldn't be annoying or inappropriate about it, but his comment was
neither and if you look at his comment history, it's not like he's spamming
the site with links.

~~~
stanleydrew
I think self-promotion is fine too. In the appropriate place. And I suggested
a more appropriate place. I was merely expressing the reasoning behind
downvoting a comment like that.

------
hellotoby
All these re-designs (for the sake of self promotion) are getting a bit much.
Lack of good design can communicate as much to the user as good design itself
can.

In the instance of 'bargain' sites (Zappos, Craigslist etc.) a deliberate un-
design communicates the affordability of the product far more than a slickly
designed site would.

------
kalms
I remember visiting the site after hearing about the aquisition; quickly
panning it and then leaving again, slightly confused. My gut feeling was "hell
no".

With that out of the way, I must say I don't like these sort of open letters.
They make the sender seem like a giant douchebag, which I'm in no way stating
he that is, but it just doesn't seem fair. Why take the bully approach and
pull down their pants in broad daylight? Keep it between you and the company
in question.

Beyond that, I must admit that metalab is on to something. Maybe Zappos should
listen, just a little bit. If they can and keep their dignity after this.

------
ars
People really look at iconography? When I look for something, I never look for
the icon, I look for the word.

The shape of the word IS the icon.

I would find "Search" as a word many times faster than I would find an
hourglass.

~~~
metalab
So when you glance at your car dashboard do you look for "DEFROST" or "RADIO
POWER"? No, you look for cues based on positioning, size, and the icon on the
button.

~~~
ars
I would love to look for "DEFROST", but I'm not given the choice.

In my car I know the location. In a new car, you try it out. In no case does
the icon help very much.

Try figuring out the difference between the icon for the front vs. the rear
defrost.

------
KevBurnsJr
The proposed design does not have a single full image of a shoe above the
fold.

~~~
metalab
Huh? <http://cld.ly/xc57d0>

~~~
bmj
But there are no descriptions, and the images are only partially above the
fold.

As others have pointed out, there's no good reason for the testimonial banner
--why does Zappos need to toot its own horn?

~~~
rickharrison
partially above the fold? What resolution are you using that an image 400
pixels down on the page is partially below the fold?

------
brandon272
There's a level of irony in the fact that the author of this blog
post/presentation frequently scorns other designers for even the slightest
likeness to what he considers to be his own design stylings, but he just
completely and totally ripped off a blog post format that is so similar to a
format that Dustin Curtis has produced and honed in the past that there are
users here who are noting it and have even remarked that they looked for his
navigation when first coming upon the site.

Good designer. A lot to learn about business.

------
wesruv
First: Good design and functionality are the same thing. The saying goes form
over function, not design over function. If one thing functions better than
another, it can be described as better design.

I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that some of the simpler proposed UI changes
(better visual separation, bigger fonts, clearer visual distinction of
elements, good-sized clickable iconic images) would improve the Zappos site
tremendously.

Second: Most of the posts on this page are good examples of what kills me
working as a web guy.

Engineers/Analysts want everything down to the color of each link to be data
driven, to the point of irrationality. To me it's obvious when a design has
been manhandled by this division of a Web team. Not all points of data are
meaningful, and data does not know all ("Yes, it’s true that a team at Google
couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each
blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a
border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case."
<http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html>)

Developers don't grasp every detail of what good design should be and tend to
simplify and marginalize the web designer job. (Although seeing a lot of the
"talent" out there, I can understand why this happens a lot. Great web
designers are rare, hold on to them tightly)

Designers have a hell of a time describing why their abstract ideas have
practical implications. At the same time a lot of designers grow strong
opinions and giant egos. It practically comes with the job description. If a
designer can't fight for their ideas well enough (most of which being
abstract), the get to eat other peoples ideas all day long. Typicaly the ideas
of people that have no background in design T_T

There's a balance to this. I know it's out there, and I know it can work. All
of these positions are valuable, and they all have their areas of expertise.
Why the hell do conversations like this turn into food fights between the
Jets, the Sharks and the Goths (ok that metaphor doesn't scale)

Lastly, here's my two cents As a first time viewer of their current site I
find the layout of the site confusing. The site seems to have a hard time
pulling my attention to any one spot that I care about.

Banner blindness is in full effect on the homepage. The dual sidebar design
with all text links seems like a bad choice to me. I didn't start caring about
anything until I reached the box with highlighted products with pictures of
shoes... But they weren't shoes I cared about since the site knows nothing
about me.

The current site is a large chorus of voices all talking at the same volume.
However web sites should not be a high school choir, there should be points of
interest that stick out for me to sink my teeth into.

Granted, if I realy want shoes from them, it wouldn't be hard to read through
their links to find what I want. But the design could make this choice easier
and quicker (IMO).

So the gradient love may not be the road to go, that would depend on the
audience (although I happen to enjoy a lot of it). Yes this UI is totally
possible (even in IE6 _gasp_ ) in the hands of a compotent HTML CSS dev, but I
imagine there are stricter bandwidth constraints due to the amount of traffic
they get.

His IA may not be the right one, but that's why baby Jesus made A>B & multi-
variant testing. It's the job of an engineer or analyst to tell the designer
where things should go and about how large they should be. He correctly points
out a lot of areas that the design is lacking.

This isn't to say Andrew's is the holy grail, but I think it's an interesting
stab at quite a few (what I see as) problems.

------
Quarrelsome
Dear Sir, you suck...... I amz betters. btw, can I has job?

 _sigh_

I swear there are more of these every day and his complaints are pretty
pedantic. The site is okay as is.

------
frisco
Paging dcurtis...

~~~
rantfoil
I agree -- was immediately looking for the dcurtis navigation and then
realized it wasn't him.

Dustin has redefined the blogazine. He should be flattered.

~~~
danw
I think others may have done the design per article pre-
<http://www.jasonsantamaria.com/>

~~~
kmpstr
<http://gregorywood.co.uk> too

------
mrlebowski
Why are all the better off and useful sites are getting such "your design is a
mess" reviews - Zappos, Craigslist, Amazon. I am sure Zappos has a team
dedicated to designing their site to the last pixel.

And an open letter to the CEO? seems familiar from a recent dcurtis post :D

------
mlLK
Clever job/contract application/proposal OP, well played.

------
holloway9
Having never shopped with Zappos before, and having never visited the new
"Zeta" site until I saw Andrew's take on it, I think I have somewhat of an
advantage in looking at this redesign.

I value functionality much more highly than design. Having said that, both the
old site and Andrew's redesign are almost functionally identical in my eyes.
They both let me do the same things (the things that I would most want to do
when coming to Zappos) in almost exactly the same way.

Sure, Andrew's looks prettier, and as I said it does not negatively affect my
usage of the site, but as many of you have already pointed out, if his
redesign doesn't bring in more conversions, it would be useless to spend any
time or money on it.

------
sb
my general lack of interest in shopping (or being from europe--difficult to
judge from the inside...), i have never actually heard of zappos before the
amazon acquisition. could some guys from the us briefly explain what's so
great about zappos? i looked at the--admittedly kind of old-fashioned--web-
site and it was not really clear what they are selling/doing that made it
special...

thanks in advance!

~~~
frisco
Their return policy is so lenient and customer service so good that you can
order 5 pairs of shoes to try on and return four with no problem. And, they
all get there within a couple days max.

I've never ordered from Zappos, but I've heard this story from many unrelated
people now.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
We're all related, you know...

------
audette
Design asthetic is one thing, selling millions of dollars worth of shoes
(every day) and serving tens of millions of pageviews (every day) is another.
Don't forget one of the most important criteria for any scalable design on a
site of this scale: speed. Speed, CDN requirements and caching, image load
time, these are more important than how shiny and flashy a site looks at this
level. IMO.

------
suhail
Clear case of effective design versus simply aesthetic design--most people
prefer to make more money and follow effective design.

Gradients and gloss are not required elements in the web 2.0 era, it's all
just fluff at the end of the day--Zappos cares about its bottom line, that's
how you start to make a billion dollar company =)

------
davidw
If someone wants to show what an awesome designer they are, I have a bunch of
sites that I'd love for you to have a look at. Of course, most of them don't
receive so much traffic...

------
krianbalma
I head up UX and Web Strategy at Zappos, here is my open letter response to
that post:

<http://tinyurl.com/rcrz3o>

------
yeabuddy
what a fucking snob

------
peterpan22
Awesome redesign!

