Getting started 5: Shipping fees that do not kill the sale

Chapter 5 of 15 of Getting Started with Trinity, by Brad Bussell, 2AData. Also on the web at www.2adata.com/getting-started.

Shipping is the second price on every order, and shoppers see it at the end, when they are deciding. Cart research has put unexpected shipping and fees at the top of the reasons people abandon a cart for years. Our own numbers agree.

What stores on Trinity charge

Store	Mode	Firearm	Accessory	Ammunition	Result
Our own store	Live carrier rates with floors	$18 long gun, $14.50 handgun	$9.95 floor	$9.95 floor; $14 plus $0.25 a box added when a gun ships with it	996 web orders in 90 days
Firearms only drop shipper	One flat rate per gun, stated in the gun.deals feed	$23.95	none sold	none sold	57 orders a day
Most dealers	Price based	$18	$9.85 to $10	$14 plus $0.25 a box	working
The new store, for about a day at the end of its first week	$23.95 flat per item, any item	$23.95	$23.95	$23.95	a $140 four item cart was quoted $95.80 shipping and abandoned; it now runs live carrier rates with a $23.95 firearm floor and a $9.95 floor on everything else
Highest in the fleet	Rates set high	about $30	about $20	about $21 plus $6 a box	3 web orders in 90 days

On the new store, $23.95 was a small share of a gun's price but 46 percent of the median accessory and 63 percent of the median box of ammunition. Guns survived it. Accessories and ammo did not.

What works

• A rate per kind of item. Trinity's price based mode charges one rate for a firearm, one for everything else, and an ammunition rate that grows per box, so the shopper pays for what actually ships.
• Powder and primers are hazmat ($38 flat) and stay off your store unless you switch HazMat Products on in Settings. Ammunition is not hazmat and should not be priced like it.
• Say it up front. In price based and flat modes the gun.deals feed carries your shipping cost, so the shopper sees the delivered price before the click. A live rate store sends Calculated at Checkout unless we switch its feed to quote its floors. A surprise at checkout is a lost sale.
• Free shipping is optional and is set per product, per brand or per category, never by an order total. Items of 40 lb or more never ship free. Our own store runs it on two brands.
• Handguns ship cheaper than long guns. A separate handgun rate ($14.50 on our store) wins orders on the most shopped category.
• Pickup. If you have a shop, turn on pickup. Shoppers see Pickup in Store at checkout, not on the product page, so tell local buyers yourself: your Google Business Profile, signs in the shop, your social posts. On one store, pickup was the best converting path and shoppers only found it at checkout.

The card fee

Trinity can add a 3 percent fee on credit cards (never debit, never on the tax). Our own store charges it. Two of our busiest dealers do not charge it, and one tells shoppers on every product page that it charges no card fees and no junk fees. Either way works. If you charge it, the fee shows as its own line in the order summary once the card number, expiry and CVV are complete and the card is found to be a credit card, before Place Order, and again on the receipt.

1. Rate mode: price based, flat per item, flat per class, or live carrier rates with floors
2. Pickup in store, with or without a fee
3. Price based: one firearm rate, one accessory rate, ammunition per box
4. Extra charge when one order ships from more than one distributor

Previous: Setting your prices. Next: The price comparison sites.

<!-- search: shipping fees shipping rates what should I charge for shipping what to charge for shipping how much to charge shipping cost firearm rate handgun long gun accessory ammunition per box hazmat flat rate price based live rates easypost free shipping card fee surcharge pickup abandoned cart trinity guide -->