When Should You Remove Information Section From Ecommerce Site?

[Planet13]

A question for you:

I have an ecommerce site that has a large information section (articles, related business directory, etc).

The information sections get the majority of traffic, but the visitors don't buy anything. I have put closely related products with an add to cart button on the information pages, but still people almost never buy those items.

So I am thinking of moving all that information section off of my ecommerce domain, starting a new domain that would be monetized with adsense, and just having my ecommerce site focus on ecommerce.

Has anyone ever done this before? What were the results?

Since a large portion of inbound links point to the information sections of my site, and will thus have to be redirected to a different domain, how much will it hurt to lose those links?

Alternatively, would it be better to cut out the information section, and instead integrate it into the text of the ecommerce pages? For example: Would it be better to take the text from blue widgets information page and integrate it into the blue widgets category page (with an appropriate 301 redirect)?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Planet13]

@ enigma1:

Thanks for the tip.

It is going to be difficult, because for most items, they are unique enough that there isn't a standard model number (a lot of the products are something along the lines of what one might find on etsy as opposed to what one might find on amazon).