The following outlines the auctioning features for our product. These are the day-to-day features you can offer your buyers and sellers:
General auction features
- Dynamic real-time bidding:
- Bidding updates in real time.
- The webpage does not have to be refreshed or reloaded for the user to see latest bidding
- Overtime bidding:
- To derive true market value and prevent sniping
- Bidding can be extended by 10 mins if a bid is received in the last 10 minutes of an auction.
- Bidding continues until the last person stops bidding.
- The time left counts down in real time
- Various bidding types:
- Incremental bidding
- Auto-bidding – bidders can set a maximum bid and leave the system to bid on their behalf.
- Sealed Bids – hidden bids, often used for pledges or sealed bid auctions.
- Buy Now bidding – an instant purchase can be made. This can be connected to a payment system and purchase made on line immediately
- Winning/Losing indicators – graphical display of the users current position
- ‘My Bids’ – bidders can see instantly their position for all lots they are bidding on.
- Opening bid – the level the first bid in the auction starts
- Bid increments – the minimum bid that must be placed to increase the bidding
- Reserves – the value that must be reached before the item will be sold.
- Set start and end date and time for lot
- Concept of auctions – this is where lots can be organised in to congruous groups of related items and advertised as a complete sale
- Emails alerts to bidders covering the following instances:
- Confirmation bids have been placed
- When they have been outbid
- Confirmation of autobids
- Bidding remains below reserve
- Registration confirmation
- Admin is copied in to any or all of these emails depending upon preference
- Set your own terms and conditions for the use of the site
- Search – there are a number of ways users can locate lots for sale:
- Lots can be searched on a site wide basis
- Users can filters using the categories available in the navigation
- Users can use tags to locate similar and related lots
- Lots can be searched filtered by category
- Lot list filtering – bidders can view the lots by the following:
- Latest lots added
- Lots ending soon
- Lot with the current highest price
- Lots with the current lowest price
- Related items – this shows the items users may also be interested similar lots for sale.
- A good example can on the Buy Once Give Twice auction site
- For charity versions, admin can manage charities and non-profit pages – this means dedicated pages can be set up promoting the charity itself.
Market place features
These features are those that allow site visitors to put their own lots up for sale:
- Sellers can add, edit and mange lots through the “Manage my lots” section
- Sellers can set the following:
- Opening bid
- Reserve
- Bid increment
- Start and end time;
- Lots can be set as draft/live/archive
- Detailed descriptions can added and edited
- Lot images can be added (unlimited)
- Video can be embedded in lots to enhance the information presented to the bidders.
- Users can see whether the item has been paid for
- Despatch address is revealed when payment for the item has been received.
- We can add new fields to the lots (or any other entities for that matter)
- Users can place “classified ads” to entice sellers to come to the site to sell to a targeted audience.
- This means buyer and sellers can be matched together.
