If you were to include screenshots and write a blog post on this it could generate a discussion which could get you some useful feedback (and promote your site on HN).
That's a good idea. I'll write a postmortem after the fact, but right now I'm busy reverting the site to its former state. Conversions dropped ~75%, so it's beyond the point where its practical to tweak the design in order to get it back to par. The entire goal was to increase conversions. It didn't. Rewind.
Please do write that postmortem. I'm very interested in the subject of older designs that are more popular than the ones using the latest & supposedly greatest tools.
Sometimes simple and ugly triumph? We read some marketing experiences of ugly banner adverts getting more click conversions than modern ones. 1 it's an odd one.
Case in point: the site we're looking at right now.
It's an opinion of course, but I personally find the hacker news design to be dreadfully ugly; yet it's one of the sites I visit and interact with the most frequently. It's simple and very usable. A flashy modern design might make it look better, but if not done well it might also impede functionality, and thus make me visit it less often. And the obvious lack of pretense is psychologically satisfying. Simple and ugly is fine if it's functional.
