How to Build your own Online Auction Website like eBay
Here is everything that you ought to know about creating an auction website like ebay from scratch in minimal time and minimal hassles.
15 years ago, in 2002, the online auction business occupied a sizable 30% of all online e-commerce transactions. Fast forward to 2017, online auction businesses have grown to a scale that has taken eCommerce analysts by surprise.
Online auction eliminate the inherent limitations that made physical auctions difficult and less efficient. It makes anybody to bid for a product of their choice from anywhere without restrictions of geography, time, physical presence or even time. The Internet binds everyone together.
Additionally, the web also provides a wide-range of benefits like time-stamped electronic bid forms, online searches that can throw up listings of latest articles being sold on auction and much more. All these benefits, combined with the easy availability of eCommerce website building solutions have led to mushrooming growth of online auction websites across the website.
In its E-Commerce & Online Auctions in the US: Market Research Report dated April 2017, IBISWorld estimates the annual revenue of online auction business to be in the range of $394bn. And it is pegged to be growing at an impressive 13.3% annually.
The Many Spokes of the Auction Business Model
The auction business model consists of several types. Each auction model has its own model and method of determining the price and awarding the final buyer.
There are three parties to an auction or bid:
Seller: The owner of the product put for up on auction
Buyer or Bidder: The individual who bids an amount to buy the product for
Auctioneer: The manager or the individual who oversees the auction
The three main auction business models include:
Buy it now (Buyout):
The seller has the option to fix a regular price for the product apart from the ongoing bidding. The product is sold when it gets the best price, either from the bid or from the fixed price.
Reserve price:
The seller sets a base auction price for the product. The auction begins from the set base price. The highest bidder gets the product.
Proxy bidding:
The bidder uses a software to bid on his behalf. The software is fixed with a maximum price that the bidder is willing to pay. The software does the bidding according to other bidders until the auction is won.
The First Step Forward
Getting to know stuff you need to build an online auction website
Photo gallery system to host product images
There are certain image gallery scripts to host your products on an auction website. On setting up PHP image integration will let to showcase or sell your product image on auction website through additional features likes category isolation, tags to the image and much more.
Payment gateways
A rich featured payment gateway enables in performing payment processing in controlled and high-end encryption for today’s online auctioneers. Since there are widely used payment gateways options such as
- Offsite Payment (Simple Checkout)
- Server Integration
- Direct Post Integration
- Own Secure Payment Server
Community or Bulletin forum for discussions
The Community builder help you manage connections on the auction website. This integration enables the buyers to communicate with the sellers through the community builder.
RSS or automated emailing system
The RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, it is a “Collection of a list” making your own wares list available automatically to the customers or buyers as daily deals Mail.
Proxy Bidding System
The proxy Bidding system is a kind of software that allows to automatically place a bid on your behalf to the maximum amount of possibilities to the highest bidding. The system will allow you to remain the higher bidder and winner of the auction. The proxy builder will remain confidential throughout all the auctions.
BIN (Buy It Now) functionality
The Buy It Now features enables the seller to fix an option for the seller apart from the bidding. This option ensures in favoring both the extends Buyer and Seller. The seller can accept the price of the product by not placing a bid from the buyer.
Reserve Price Selling system
This system allows the seller to place the minimum price that seller wishes to sell an item. The features obligate sell the item, not above the actual base price of the product.
Multiple income models like pay per bid, pay per contact, etc.
This refers to pay per bid, pay per contact etc., which is generally a business module allows the consumers to pay a nonrefundable to place a bid on the auction products.
Getting the auction website ready
To Build an auction (bidding) website like eBay is more or less similar to building an eCommerce store. The prime difference would be in listings. In an auction house (website) the listing will consist of open bids that customers (bidders) can bid for. The bid gets through based on various factors like maximum bidding price, timeout, etc.
Preparing the Bid Listings
Auction websites become successful only for one reason. The quality of their bid listings. Bid listings are list of articles that are put up for auction on the website. There are several types of listings to choose from:
Regular Listings
Easiest way to list your articles. Pick a category to which the article pertains to and add it to it to begin selling.
Reserve Price Auctions
Fix a reserve price for each article at which can be sold.
Dutch Auctions
Dutch Auctions is the best way to sell many identical products in a single auction.
Featured items
Feature item auctions are for specific and exclusive items that can be featured on the homepage of the online auction website for maximum user attention. Think of something identical to ongoing offers in an eCommerce website.
Establishing Trust
Trust is the cornerstone upon which any auction website is built. Bidders and sellers need to trust an auction website before entrusting their rare articles as well as money for auction business.
However, just like in the eCommerce business, building trust in auctioneering is not easily done. It takes, time, effort and a lot of experimenting in terms of timing and positioning the bids in the website. Auction websites that enjoy a positive trust rating will enjoy more sales volumes than its ordinary counterparts.
Contus — Your Perfect Ally In Creating A Bidding And Auction Website
Contus is a Digital Transformation company that leverages the might of Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud to deliver next-gen solutions to enterprises. eCommerce is one of the proven forte of Contus. The company has scripted several innovations and milestones in eCommerce development.
Contus has inherent website in building bidding and auction websites that need sophisticated backends with secure payment gateways. Integrating advanced technologies like Augmented Reality, in-app messaging, geo-location tracking, delivery management and much more.
Well! worried how much it will cost to develop an auction website like eBay?
The cost to develop an auction website depends on the features that eBay and other auction websites don’t have. Contus is specialised in building innovative technologies that can’t be found in other applications. The major factor in developing your auction website with Contus is to experience the high performance and scalability compared to the ground-up developments.
