It is easy to create a redesign for a website. It is less easy to pivot a billion-dollar business which has the agility of an aircraft carrier while she is sinking. If your answer to that question is "What do we really need the planes for, anyway?" and "I think the conning tower would look much better in teal.", you might find a wee bit of difficulty getting taken seriously.
Exactly. One thing the author conveniently forgot to take into account is the performance of the current site. If you don't have access to actual usage data such as heatmaps, click rates, page browsing times, you are quite likely shooting yourself in the foot just for the sake of beautifying the website.
He could argue that he was consciously only looking at the design aspect and that would also be a mistake. You can't isolate performance and design for a site. And when it comes to business, function takes precedence over beauty.
