Auction - Setup and Management

Auction - Setup and Management

This document covers all aspects of the auction module. From setting up an auction and managing bidders to completing the auction and shipping the item.

Contents

This guide can be broken down into several areas:

1.     Creating / Setting up the auction via the back office.


2.     Ranking of the auction product


3.     Configuring Help Text


4.     Bidding and bidders


5.     The bidding process


6.     Managing Bids and Bidders


7.     Relisting the product


8.     After the auction has ended.


9.     Shipping the auction item and postage rules


10.     Customer Orders Hold/Release


11.    Reporting and Dispatching Setup


12.     The full customer Journey




Creating / Setting up the auction in the back office


Creating the auction


The very first step for setting up the auction, is to create the product. There are some rules for the product that must be observed:

  • The product cannot have size or color variations.

  • The product cannot have been previously sold.

  • The product cannot be marked as preorder

  • The product must be marked as stock holding.

  • Since it is a stock holding item, the product requires stock to be booked in (quantity of 1). Please make sure the stock is booked against the correct branch.

  • The product cannot have VAT attached.

  • The product cannot be sold more than once.

  • The product cannot be discountable


As long as these conditions are met, the auction can be setup and ran.

Once the product has been created, navigate to the product via Main menu →  Stock Amendment and ensure the Auction Product box is checked:





Upon saving the form, you will now be presented with the Maintain Auction link, located to the right of the screen:



Click the Maintain Auction link, which will open the following screen:



From here, you can configure the auction to your requirements:

  • Start Website Display on - This is the date and time that you would like to start the auction from.

  • End Website Display on - This is the date and time that you would like the auction to end at.

  • Number of days allocated for purchase - This is the amount of time that the winner of the auction will have in order to pay for the product.

  • Starting Price - This is the price that you would like to start bidding from

  • Reserve Price - This is the minimum value bid that will win the item. For example, if a reserve is set at £50.00 and the highest bid received is £45.00, the item will be unsold.

  • Bid increment amount - The increment in which bids can be placed.

Once all of these are configured, click apply changes to save your settings. The auction is now setup and as long as the item is marked as sell on web, it will appear on the site.

Although the product can now be seen on the site, a countdown will display how long remains until the auction starts. Bids cannot be placed until this time.



Ranking Of The Auction Product

  • You will need to use the current Ranking Maintenance in order to rank the products. Any auction items that have ended will go towards the bottom of the listing page.

  • In the case of displaying auction items on the same listing page with regular items, these listings will respect the ranking set in the back office.

  • The auction items will go towards the end of the page, once the auction ends. This is done automatically by setting the ranking to 999. You can change this if needed in Catalogue File Maintenance â†'Maintain Web Pages and Rankings

Please note: The auction-ended items will be ranked towards the end of the web Sub-department.

E.G:

If you have an auction item that is linked to Home Kit â†' Adult, and the listing page for Home Kit displays products from Adult web Sub-department and the Junior department, this means that when the auction has finished, the auction product will display after all of the Adult items, but still before the Junior items.


Configuring Help Text

If a user clicks on the Help Icon, a pop up is shown to the user, explaining how the auction works.


This text can be configured to your liking.

To configure the text, navigate to Main Menu →  Customer Order Setup →  Online Shop Static Page Maintenance. The Filename needs to be "auction-help-text" and the Menu Position set as "Other" to avoid displaying this page as part of the footer links.



Bidding and Bidders

Now that the auction is setup, it will display on the website and bids can be made.

Please Note: In order to bid on an auction product, the bidding user must be logged into their account. If a user who isn’t logged in tries to place a bid, they will be informed of this and asked to log in or create an account.




The Bidding Process

The process for bidding is as follows:

  • When a user places a bid, the bid should be the highest amount that they are willing to pay for the item.

  • If the item has a reserve and a bid exceeds this, the bid amount will be equal to the reserve, unless someone places another bid.

  • This is demonstrated by the below graph, where three bids (£300, £400 and £500) have been placed on an item by different bidders. The winner of the auction is 'Bidder 3' and the sale price is £405




Please note: The system will auto-bid for you based on your max. bid amount. It will try to outbid the current highest bidder by the lowest value possible based on the increment amount, as can be seen in the chart above.

When a user participates in the auction, they will receive an email:

  • When placing a bid - Confirming that the bid is received.

  • When being outbid - Notifying the user that they have been outbid and inviting them to place another bid

  • When the auction has finished and the user has won - An email is received informing the user that they have won the auction and inviting them to pay.

  • When the auction has finished and the user hasn't won - An email is sent notifying the user that they have not won but highlighting that if the winner doesn’t pay, the item may still be up for purchase.

All emails can be edited to contain the content you wish and a number of dynamic variables are available for replacement in the template.

These can be managed from Customer Order Setup → Web Pages and Email Text → Web Text


Managing Bids and Bidders

In addition to the functionality listed above, there is also the functionality to remove and manage bids and bidders.

Special permissions must be given to a user in order for them to be able to access this extended functionality.

To give yourself or another user permission:

  • Navigate to File Maintenance  → Employee Maintenance

  • Locate the user you wish to grant the permissions to and click edit.

  • Check the box titled Allow Auction Amend Bids and click Update

  • The user will now be able to amend and manage bids




In order to amend a bid, you must be on the auction section of the listed product (as described in the first step)

  • Bids are ordered by maximum bid from high to low. The bidder ID is the database number for the customer.

  • To change an individual bid you can change the value in the box next to each bidder. Make sure to tick the select box beside it and press Update Bid.

  • To remove an individual bid you can tick the box next to the bidder you want to remove and press Remove Bid

  • Please Note: No emails will be sent as a result of amending or removing bids / bidders







Relisting the product

Sometimes, you may wish to remove all bidders/bids and relist the product as a fresh auction.

To do this, simply click the Relist Item button in the top right of the screen. This will remove all bids for this item and set the auction to active again:


After the auction has ended

On winning an item, the winning bidder will be able to add product to basket and continue with the checkout.

They will however need to be logged in order to add product to the basket.

  • The timeframe for payment is dependent on the value set when configuring the auction.

  • The auctioned goods will be sent after receipt of payment, to the address specified.

  • If the highest bidder fails to pay within the specified timeframe of the date the auction ends, the email will be sent to the next highest bidder(and so on) to give them the opportunity to purchase the product (as long as the reserve price is met).

When a user comes back to the item after the auction has ended, dependent on whether they won or not, they will be presented with the following screens:



Everyone will be shown the below page:




If two people bid the same amount, the first bid takes priority

If the winner is already on the listing page, once it refreshes (automatically every 60 seconds), they will be able to see and click the Add To Bag button and proceed to checkout and complete the purchase.

Therefore, the winner may have to wait up to a minute after the auction finishes, before the Add To Bag button will display.

Alternatively, the winner can come back to the listing at any time by navigating to the product or using the link inside of their Winner Confirmation email.

Please Note: Only the winner will see the Add to Bag button and have the ability to purchase the item. Losing bidders will simply be informed that the auction has finished.





Shipping The Auction Item And Postage Rules

Postage Rules

There are some special postage rules that can be used for the auction items, as these products may have special requirements with regards to size/weight.

These special rules can be used if the auction item is setup with Postage Band T.

Below are some examples of how the postage is calculated when the auction item is purchased in combination with other regular (postage by order value) items.

The concept for this rule is to always pick the higher charge, depending on the rules set against the products in the customers basket:





Customer Orders Hold/Release

We have added an additional department for filtering in Customer Order Hold/Release program.
The department can be selected as per below:









Reporting and Dispatching Setup


There are a couple of settings you may wish to add depending on your preference.
File Maintenance > System Configuration > System (the first/default tab) towards the end of the page.

These will help "tell" the system how the auction products should be handled in terms of reporting and despatching.

The Auction Site Delivery Method is optional and will simply overwrite the delivery method on each auction product line of the orders being placed.


The Full Customer Journey


Step 1 - User clicks to place bid




Step 1.1 (If customer not logged in already) - Customer invited to log in and redirected back to listing




Customer can now add a bid:





Step 2 - The Bidding Process - Here, we can see 2 bidders are competing for a product. Notifications are displayed in almost real time to all bidders.



If two people bid the same amount, the first bid takes priority


Step 3 - Auction End

The below screenshot shows the difference in screens between the winner of the auction and a loser of the auction:


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