Scott,

Here's my 2 cents, for what it's worth. Honestly, I spent ten years
developing online stores and e-commerce technologies, including some
major vendor sites in apparel, and I can't point to anything on the
site that would account for a 50% reduction in sales. A few points for
small nits, maybe, but 50%? No.

* Red buttons — red is generally regarded as an alarming color. I
understand that you're trying to focus on a call to action, and match
your color scheme, but you might test cooler colors, as well as
popular "buy now" warm/hot colors like orange–Tide boxes are orange
for a reason. I also think the button is too large–too "in your
face."

* I think the zoom is distracting, especially since it pops up over
the call to action. Instead of zoom, as I suggested before, do
X-ray-in place when the cursor is over the product image.

* The zoom view as it is does not work properly on IE8 on Windows–the
"magnifying glass" on the left doesn't follow the image under the
cursor, it just shows whatever was under the cursor when the zoom
started.

* On Chrome, sometimes the zoom doesn't come up at all, it just blanks
out the color/size/quantity area to white and does nothing–this was
observed on Quantum jacket, Pack Windbreaker and Tropical Jacket, but
not on other products. Sometimes refreshing the page would "wake it
up" so I'm guessing it's not really product related, but rather some
kind of race condition with the JavaScript on the page.

* If you click on a color swatch to see the product in that color, the
drop-down should also change to that color–fewer clicks because
shoppers are lazy.

* At 1024×768 resolution, all of the "cool stuff" is below the
fold–the strip of photos and video to click on are lost, as well as
the product details and key features. There's nothing going on at the
bottom of the page to tell you that there's something down there to
look at–you'd never know if you didn't bother to scroll. That leaves
the product page looking pretty "vanilla". I also tried 800×600, but
the site was obviously not designed for that resolution (which is
probably OK).

* I've asked a couple of people here (all SeV clients) what they
think, and they all said that the old site expressed more "cool
factor". They tossed out the idea that the video of the product should
just roll in embedded form underneath the "$5 SHIPPING EVERY ORDER
EVERY DAY" message area, and the links and bits currently in that
position should be relocated elsewhere. It was also suggested that you
make some of the product shots with the models more prominent, like
your old catalog; the follow-on to that was the new site doesn't feel
as personal. Everyone asked to see the old site for comparison, and
made their comments from their memory of it.

I think it would be really helpful if you could get the old site up
someplace. It doesn't need to be fully functional, just up enough to
let us see the product pages again.

I also think you shouldn't look at the exit rate alone–you need to
look at cart abandonment. You can be tearing your hair out looking at
why people are exiting on the product page, when they are actually
putting something in the cart, hitting "Continue Shopping", and then
exiting later–that's a different problem and no amount of jockeying
on the product page structure is likely to solve it.

I wonder, too, if people aren't just tightening up their belts a bit
as the holidays approach.

Patrick