Online Auctions Made Easy

By LISA MORGAN
February 14, 2000

Bidland.com's AuctionSite Builder is an easy-to-use application that quickly assembles auction sites. You can use it to streamline auction capabilities on your existing corporate Web site, or if you don't already have a site, you can set up your own branded auction that's hosted on Bidland.com's site.

The AuctionSite Builder, located on the Bidland.com site, rapidly creates comprehensive and attractive auction sites that can include several product categories.

One attractive feature lets you customize the auction site's appearance using logos, images and marketing messages in line with your company's corporate and product branding strategies. That's a particularly valuable tool if auctions will become an integral part of your company's sales strategy.

When people hear the word "auction," they think eBay.com. Truth is, there are three basic ways to set up an auction for your business.

First, post your merchandise on an auction site like eBay.com, along with items from other sellers. This is the cheapest option, but it provides no means of corporate branding, which may be important if you have more than a handful of items to sell.

Second, buy a sophisticated solution for auction and reverse-auction capabilities from an e-commerce company like Commerce One. It's the most expensive and sophisticated choice-best suited to very large businesses and industry portals.

Third, set up a branded auction site on Bidland.com. This is the best solution for companies with needs somewhere between the little guys and the behemoths.

The AuctionSite Builder creates auction sites using a set-up wizard. The wizard offers three preformatted layouts for the auction home page, where you can add logos and images from local or remote sources. We drafted a headline and body copy, then selected a color palette. The application immediately generated the home page, and we added categories, or product types, and lots, or specific products.

The categories appeared in the left-hand column of our site. The wizard let us tailor the column separately by choosing fonts, colors and a background design. We added a promotional section and attached an image to each category to help sell the merchandise. Each section appeared as a bullet linked to secondary section pages.

Within each section, we added lots, or specific products, including titles, SKUs, physical descriptions and pictures. We specified accepted payment methods, shipping terms, pricing, quantity available, auction type and duration.

After completing the auction site and initiating an actual auction, Bidland.com immediately sent an e-mail message confirming the auction posting and duration. Each day of the auction, Bidland.com sent a daily report detailing bids on auction items. At the end of the auction, it provided a summary of all bids.

Bidland.com's AuctionSite Builder makes it easy to set up and modify an auction site. However, users could be better served by more information. For example, certain steps within the wizard include instructions, while others do not. Getting the final result you want may prove to be a trial-and-error experience, but at least one that can be quickly resolved.

Lisa Morgan is a freelance business and technology writer. She can be reached at lisamorgan@mindspring.com.