Getting started 2: Your first two weeks

Chapter 2 of 15 of Getting Started with Trinity, by Brad Bussell, 2AData. Also on the web at www.2adata.com/getting-started.

Do these in order. Most take an hour or less. The one that takes weeks (search engines) is the reason to start on day one.

Day	Do this	Why	Where
1	Ask each distributor you have an account with for its catalog feed access and its electronic ordering login (often not the same as your website login), then enter them as they arrive: Lipsey's, RSR Group, Sports South, Davidson's, Bill Hicks, Zanders, Chattanooga Shooting Supplies, Crow Shooting Supply, Camfour, Kinsey's, MGE Wholesale, Orion Wholesale, Kroll International, AmChar, Iron Valley Supply (formerly Bangers), Hicks Inc., MSR Distribution, Gunarama, Tactical Gear Distributors, plus any others your Distributors page lists.	Products and stock come only from the distributors you connect. More distributors means more items in stock and a better chance of the lowest cost on each one.	Distributors. See Connect your distributors: what each one needs.
1	Set your markups, then compare a few of your prices with the same items on gun.deals.	Shoppers sort by price. See the Pricing chapter.	Pricing. See Set your markups and price tiers: the Pricing page.
1	Set shipping sized to the item: a gun rate, an accessory rate, an ammunition rate.	A $19.99 shipping charge on a $50 accessory is 40 percent of the price, and the store with the highest shipping in our fleet took 3 website orders in 90 days.	Shipping.
1	Add Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics, submit your sitemap.	Indexing takes weeks. Google is one of the three biggest referrers on every store that takes website orders, and the biggest on most of them.	See the Search engines chapter.
2	Turn on the gun.deals and WikiArms feeds and apply to both sites. If you sell ammunition, turn on the AmmoSeek feed, send AmmoSeek the feed URL when you sign up with them, and turn the feed off if they do not list you.	They send 40 to 70 percent of website orders. Both are paid services; ask them for current pricing.	Data Feeds. See Get your products listed on gun.deals and List your products on AmmoSeek.
2	Connect GunBroker (username and password only) and finish GunBroker's seller verification.	GunBroker brings our own store more orders than the website.	GunBroker. See Connect GunBroker.
3	Decide on fraud screening: NoFraud or your own checks.	A fraud chargeback costs you the goods, the shipping and your processor's dispute fee. NoFraud charges a percentage of your sales with a monthly minimum; ask them for current pricing.	See the Fraud chapter.
3	Set up Google Merchant Center with the Google product feed.	Free listings for the accessories Google allows.	Google Feed. See Google product feed and analytics.
4	Walk through a purchase on your own site on a phone. Buy a $1 test item with a real card, then refund it.	Shoppers who arrive from gun.deals and WikiArms are mostly on a phone, about 60 to 70 percent. You will find what they find.	Your storefront.
7	Check Search Console for indexing, check your feeds were pulled, read your first price comparison results.	Feeds that were never pulled, and pages that were never indexed, look exactly like a store with no customers.	Search Console, Data Feeds.
14	Compare your conversion and your prices again. Adjust.	Pricing is a dial, not a decision.	Analytics, Pricing.

Before any of it

Outgoing email. Your store cannot sell until it can send mail: confirmations, FFL requests and price quotes all go out through your own mailbox. Open Email Sending Settings, connect the mailbox your customers should see, send yourself a test, and add the two DNS records we send you where your domain is hosted. See Connect your outgoing email and Verify your store email domain (two DNS records).

Your card processor and sales tax. The processor is the one thing we cannot set up for you. Trinity works with Authorize.Net, NMI (also sold as TransNational) and Blue Dog Payments. For Authorize.Net, ask your processor for the API Login ID and Transaction Key and enter them in the Setup Wizard's Payments step or under Settings, Payment tab; for NMI or Blue Dog, email us and we connect it with you. Processors want a refund policy page before they approve you; edit yours under Pages. Set up Sales Tax before the first order. See Connect your payment gateway and Set up sales tax.

Your own FFL and SOT. Upload your license and, if you have one, your SOT in your admin. The distributor already has your license from your dealer account, so you do not send it again: the copy you upload prints on your packing slips and goes to distributors with ship to store orders, and the customer's FFL goes out with drop ship orders on its own. See Your license and SOT on file and Do I need to email FFLs to my distributors?.

Logins. Give every person their own login with the Admin, Manager or Staff role. Never share a login and never email a password. See Logins and passwords.

Your domain and your old links. Your store is built on a demo address first. On launch day the domain moves: we give you the DNS records, you or your registrar enter them, and the old site's links are pointed at the new pages so Google keeps your rankings. Your About, Shipping, Returns and Privacy pages are yours to edit under Pages, and you can turn on an age check if your state or processor wants it. See Point old website links to your new pages, Custom pages and menu links and Add an age check to your website.

Note: The go live checklist inside your admin (

Your go live checklist

) covers the things a store needs before it can take its first order: store details, FFL on file, payment gateway, shipping, outgoing email, sales tax, markups and distributors. This guide is about what comes after.

Previous: Where the orders come from. Next: Connect every distributor.

<!-- search: first two weeks checklist day one setup order of setup launch plan what first distributors prices shipping search console feeds gunbroker trinity guide -->