I admit it. I have a site that has been dog-ugly for the last two years. I don't know what I was thinking when I created it, but the design really stunk. It did fine in the SERPs and even converted okay, although there is room for improvement in both aspects, but it was just flat-out ugly.
I finally got around to redesigning it over the last few days. Luckily, it uses included headers and footers, so it wasn't too difficult to swap out the old design for the new one.
There have been some discussions recently about the positive effect of ugly sites on conversions, such as here and here.
So, now the tests begin.
1. Will my rankings be affected? Based on past experience with redesigns, I'd say probably not. I haven't changed the actual content, nor have I changed the page names or link structure, so I think things will stay the same. But we'll see...
2. Will the site convert better, worse, or stay the same? Obviously, I hope I get better conversions, but I'll need to track this closely to see what happens.
I'll post an update once I have enough data to analyze.