Articles in this section

Closing Online/Mobile Bidding and Awarding Items

Avatar
Carolyn D
Updated
Follow

There are 3 elements to closing-out your online/mobile auction:

  1. Close Bidding
  2. Award Items to high Bidders
  3. Notify Winners

Note:  Acorn, Plus, and Professional subscriptions include a Mobile Dashboard - a single screen for monitoring and editing all of the components listed below.

1. Close Bidding:

If you need to extend bidding at the last moment - use the Extend Bidding button provided on the Auction Night Screen - that will auto-extend ALL bidding group closing times by 10 minutes (and you can use those 10 minutes to edit  individual bidding groups to the desired closing times):

To Manage Closing Times:

  • If you need to adjust the closing time of a bidding group, editing the bidding group in site settings will automatically update all of the items assigned to the group.
  • Online Bidding Groups and/or Online Closing times can be viewed on your Catalog page (gridview) by using Online Bidding Group Filter and/or the Customize button to add the column(s) to your display.
  • If you need to adjust the closing times of some, but not all, items within a group,  reassign them to the bidding group with the desired closing time.   These edits can be done individually or via bulk item edits.

2.  Award Items to High Bidders: 

  • If you have already enabled Auto-Award, items will be awarded (placed in winners' shopping carts) the next time the server refreshes (1-15 minutes).  
  • If you haven't, you'll need to enable it when ready, then save the setting change to award items to winners.

To enable, go to:  Site Settings > Events > Online Auction/Mobile Bidding > Bidding Settings:

3.  Notify Winners:

How you to choose to notify winners depends on the type of event and personal preference:

  • Gala events with mobile bidding most often disable the automatic notifications and instead opt to notify winners via a single emailed invitation to self check out.  Invitations to self check-out can also be sent to winners that are not present at the gala.    Instructions for set up.
  • Online Auctions, where bidders are geographically dispersed, generally opt to "Send an email notification when an item is awarded".   This automated process will send a separate email notification for each item.   Instructions for set up.
  • You also have an option of including a shopping cart icon on the mobile tool bar.   Once items have been awarded, you can simply make announcements to the audience to click on the Cart icon on their phones to view and pay for their items.  Some chairs prefer to always display the cart icon, others prefer to enable it once items are awarded (to discourage folks from paying from fixed price or buy now price purchases each time something lands in their cart).   The cart icon can be enabled/disabled at Site Settings > Customize Your Site > Payments/Credit Card > Online Payment Options.

Related articles

Comments

0 comments

Article is closed for comments.