Online Auction

With global online auction availability, clients interact with published auctions and can react to lot status developments as well as engage with the auction house. Entering an auction bid is straightforward and instant with secure response of bid status.

Online auctions allow clients entry from wherever they are located and affords pre-bidding lot examination, portfolio balance, speculative bids as well as untethered participation, automatically encouraging competition. Whilst the art of war maybe not as intense as an auction room, online auctions are vital for their ability to build trust with a client and understand behaviour. And, while the battle may have been lost, the war is not over, and clients can redirect attention to other curated online lots; email bid notifications, counter offers, multiple lot entries and around the clock availability all heighten the sense of engagement.

Example - for the lot with auction base price 100 there are two bids, one by the user A of € 110 euros and one by the user B of € 160. Temporary winner is the user B at € 120, as the minimum increment between 100 and 200 is of € 10. If then a C user offers € 130, the system will automatically counter-bid  for user B at € 140. If a user D arrives and offers € 160 the system will automatically raise the bid of the user B to € 160, thus reaching its limit. In case of equal bids usually the bid arrived before wins. At this point if a bidder E arrives and bids € 170, he will become the new winner.

This type of auction involves the participants and encourages competition. It also allows users to redirect their offers on other lots, if the race for a lot identified in the first instance becomes prohibitive, which is not possible in an auction where it is offered "blindly".

Users are also notified via email in the case of someone overbids them, so they have the possibility to  counter-bid in they wish.

The auction house can insert bids from other sources such as email, fax, telephone, etc. from the control panel. The auction house has a control over who can participate or not at the auction; it is also possible to activate an option that allows to assign to the various users, individually, an expense limit (thus to limit the risks with users whose reliability is difficult to determine).

An interesting and useful add-on is the automatic export of bidders and offers, configurable according to different needs, for the importation of data by third-party software. The automated import of users and offers from third-party sources is also available.

Duration of the auction
The auction duration can vary from a few days to a few months, as the client wishes; it ends at a fixed moment in time (it is also possible to set multiple sessions with different closing times).