Are you ready? Use this checklist to delegate unfinished tasks or calm your nerves.
Have you seen the Pre-event Review notes we emailed to you about a week prior to your event? Our support team reviews all auction, voting contest, and virtual event sites a week prior and emails our notes to each person listed on your team at Site Settings > Customize Your Site > General > Organization Info. If you missed it, check your spam folder.
Event Date and Time
Go to Site Settings > Events > Virtual Event and make sure the date, start time, and length of your event are entered correctly. This information controls when your event will be placed on a dedicated server. If your date and time are not correct, your supporters will have trouble bidding during your virtual event.
Do not add "just in case" padding to your event timing. The software will build that in for you.
Items
Have you uploaded at least one appealing image and provided a catchy description for each of your virtual items?
Have you bulk edited your minimum bids and minimum raises to multiples of $50 or $100? This makes calling and advancing bids easier on your auctioneer.
Have you arranged the items in your item carousel in the order you plan to sell them?
Paddle Raise/Special Appeal
Have you set up a fresh paddle raise for your virtual event? Bidders who have already donated to a shared paddle raise option will see the message "You have already donated, click here to donate again." Create duplicate cash donations if you want all guests to start with a clean slate for the Virtual appeal.
Is your paddle raise set as the first item to display in your item carousel?
Have you reviewed and finalized the suggested donation amounts for your paddle raise?
Have you pre-committed donors to giving at your top suggested donation levels? Do you know how to record proxy donations during the appeal? Proxy bids for Acorn, Plus, and Professional Subscribers.
Virtual Live Auction Features
Go to Site Settings > Events > Virtual Event > Attendance and Access
Have you set up your Help Line phone number and assigned a Help Line monitor?
Have you edited your Invitation to Virtual Event and your Welcome Page message?
Go to Site Settings > Events > Virtual Event > General Settings
If you're using the progress tracker, is it set to track the revenue sources you want it to?
Have you input a goal, so that your progress tracker will have accurate scale?
Virtual Event Control Panel
Have you invited your auction night team members, your auctioneer, and your AV technician to assume a chair role on your site, so that they can access your Virtual Event Control Panel?
Have you assigned a team member to monitor your chat and a different team member to monitor your item carousel?
Do your team members understand how to place bids and how to monitor bidding and award items?
Do your team members understand how to "double-sell" items?
Guests and Signup
Have you announced your Virtual Event in your social media feeds and provided a signup link?
Have you invited your supporters to attend your virtual event?
Do you understand how to give folks access to your virtual event via the invitation system? If you have sold tickets for your virtual event, please note: selling a ticket does not automatically generate an event invite. You must bulk-send event invites yourself on the day of your event.
Are your card vaulting settings correct at Site Settings > Customize Your Site > Payments/Credit Card > Online Payment Options?
Livestream Broadcast
Do your auctioneer, item carousel monitor and chat monitor understand the latency associated with the livestream method you are using?
Do your item carousel monitor and chat monitor understand they must listen to the livestream via headsets?
Have you done a practice run with your talent, your item carousel manager, your chat monitor, and your AV technician?
Have you cleaned up any test bids, donations and chats placed during your practice run?
MOST IMPORTANTLY: Have you tested your livestream broadcast for quality video and sound transmission? If you're using external software/service to produce your feed - have you confirmed that it has been configured to use the specified settings for our platform?
Remember to conduct a final test on the live, dedicated server within 90 minutes of your scheduled start time. If you experience any issues, reboot the computer you are broadcasting from to clear any caches.
During your broadcast, some viewers may report issues, such as frozen screens or synching hiccups, that are related to their own connectivity, rather than the livestream itself. Before assuming that there is a problem with your broadcast, ascertain whether everyone is affected (in which case, it's likely a livestream issue), or only a few people. To date, the only significant livestream issues experienced during virtual events have been caused by inadequate bandwidth at the broadcast site or failure to use our specified settings.
Check-out and Item Distribution
Have you set up your credit card gateway?
Have you set up your sales receipt at Site Settings > Customize Your Site > Receipt Setup > Guest/Sales Receipt Setup?
Do you know the transaction limit for your gateway account? A low limit ($1000) may cause transactions to fail when big spenders check out.
Have you assigned a team member to turn on the shopping cart icon (at Auction Night > Virtual Event Control Panel) at the close of bidding?
Do you have a plan for distributing items to their winners?
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