Slow down in sales after implementing new Shopping Cart and accepting CC's

[Legends]

My wife and I recently went from using the free version of ejunkie shopping cart (accepting Paypal and Google Checkout) to implementing Turnkey Media's "Sunshop" shopping cart. We made the transition in early December. In late December (week leading up to Christmas) we began accepting Credit Cards through CDG Commerce. Overall our sales have slowed tremendously and I'm trying to figure out if it's something to do with the design flow, or a problem with the checkout process. I've tried and tested the cart and can get an order through no problem, however being new to this, and probably not understanding all the reasons people might bounce from our web store, I thought I would ask to see if anyone has any suggestions here.

When we used ejunkie we simply charged a flat fee on each item for shipping. Now we use shipping tables based on weight of all items in cart.
Since we switched to the new cart, Google Checkout sales have become virtually non-existent. While we don't have extremely high volumes, I would have expected more through Google Checkout in the month of December, but only had 1 through the new shopping cart.

Before starting to accept CC's we did manage a few sale through Paypal and a couple of Check/Money orders. Since the switch to CC, all Paypal sales have ended and only a few CC's have come through.

I realize that you may not be able to truly give a full review of our store since that might include actually completing a purchase, but I would love any feedback possible on possible design issues, etc that may be a factor. Our Stores site is store.legendsofamerica.com

[SteveGerencser]

1 - is the traffic to the site still at the same levels?
2 - when you changed carts did your URLs change?
3 - are you offering all three payment options? CC/PP/GC?

[Legends]

1 - is the traffic to the site still at the same levels?
2 - when you changed carts did your URLs change?
3 - are you offering all three payment options? CC/PP/GC?

1) Traffic levels are typical for this time of year to our primary domain. Don't have comparisons for the store since it's a new domain. Haven't gone into specific details of looking at individual product categories yet, comparing old pages to new, but will.
2) Yes, many URLS changed, all handled through 301 Redirects and link changes from primary domain.
3) Yes, from December 7 to December 19 PP and GC in addition to Check/Money order. On December 19 we added CC.

[JLP2073]

Not sure to understand what you mean by "our primary domain" and then "a new domain". Reading your original post I thought you just changed your shopping cart and are now accepting CCs; I didn't read anything related to domain changes

[Legends]

Not sure to understand what you mean by "our primary domain" and then "a new domain". Reading your original post I thought you just changed your shopping cart and are now accepting CCs; I didn't read anything related to domain changes

Sorry, to clarify, all of our products used to be within our primary domain of legendsofamerica.com with simple add to cart buttons. Now everything is in the shopping cart in a sub domain of store.legendsofamerica.com.

[JLP2073]

Now I understand.

I think you have got a slow down in sales it's because most of the people navigating to your page don't know you have got a shop where they can purchase goods.
Your issue is basically how to make people go from www.legendsofamerica.com to store.legendsofamerica.com . It took me a while to see the links on the left hand side, because you used the same fonts and background colour it doesn't make the store stands out.
You need to make your shop more obvious the way your website is designed now doesn't help much. For instance in the section "Explore Route 66", in the text you have "Travel the Mother Road 66 through all...." at the end of this text I would add something like "Purchase our Road 66 items here" linking to the corresponding categories in your shopping area.
I don't know how SunShop works but trying finding a way to put a section showing the featured products in your home page.

[HTMLBasicTutor]

Maybe your decline in Google Checkout purchases can be explained by this: Building one wallet: Google Checkout is transitioning to Google Wallet and this: Google Checkout Becomes Part of Google Wallet

[crossland]

We have seen eCommerce sites increase sales by offering Paypal as many people are reluctant to give out their credit card details and like the security offered by Paypal.

You may have been the victim of the reverse; can you offer Paypal on your new site?

[Legends]

We have seen eCommerce sites increase sales by offering Paypal as many people are reluctant to give out their credit card details and like the security offered by Paypal.

You may have been the victim of the reverse; can you offer Paypal on your new site?

At this time we accept PayPal, Google Checkout, Visa, Master Card, Discover, American Express, and Check/Money Order as options at checkout. I did add a Phone option yesterday in hopes of catching those that don't want to enter CC online.

[conortreacy]

Bad time to test marketing and new software. This all should have been done in June/July or if not possible, it should have waited until after the Christmas Season.

That being said, is there any way to view how the site USED to look before swapping over?

The links into the "Rocky Mountain Store" are way too small. Also, since you have a "grand opening" type banner at the bottom of the page, I actually thought it was for a different site. There's no "buy here" or "buy now" type buttons, so that's going to hurt with online sales too.

Definitely at the top of the page there should be a button to say something along the lines of "buy here" or "visit our online store". As it stands, I'd never have found the link (other than I went looking for it). There's no uniform flow between the two sites. They're almost treated as INDIVIDUAL rather than being part of the same site/company.