Auction Software Essentials: Big Purchases & Shipments

eAuctions Video Chapter 8: Big Purchases & Large Shipments

Optimize the Process for Big Purchases

A key step in providing a great buyer experience is to make the process simple, easy, and complete. We want to cover all our bases while still making things streamlined for the purchaser. Let’s go over the buying process features that are essential to eAuction software.

Process Automation

Large purchases are challenging, and that's just the nature of dealing with large purchases. But we can help to automate this process and enable it to go as seamlessly as possible. To do this, we dissect the workflow that would typically be manual, or have manual steps in it, and we work to automate that.

Verify Qualification for Expensive Purchases

With large purchases, there are really important steps to verify that the bidders can actually make a bid, that they're qualified to be able to make a bid, and that they have the resources. They may have to go through a verification process before they can join the bid.

For example, they may have to show that they are qualified to make a purchase on a home, if we're doing home sales through an online auction. Car sales are another potential place where verification to purchase might be needed.

The verification can involve a pre-approval, or a statement, reference, evidence of funds available, etc. We may have to also have them go through legal documents where they're actually signing and doing a credit approval or credit check, if there's some expensive piece of jewelry, or a deposit process, where in order to participate in the bid they have to have an earnest money deposit that shows that, “yes, I understand that if I get the winning bid and I don't complete the process, it's on me, and it's my responsibility, and in which case, I will lose that earnest money, and the winning auction becomes available to the next highest bidder.

Order Fulfillment Verification

That's one potential scenario. Another is a situation where once the item is actually purchased or paid for, most of the folks who are paying for these expensive items would need to be able to verify that they received the items before the funds are released. So, we don't want to just send the seller the funds, we want to wait until the seller actually fulfills the order and make sure that fulfillment is confirmed by the purchaser.

Verification Tools & Software

There are some great APIs and tools that we use in order to enable that, one of which is called Payoneer. Payoneer has a great process where we can set up an escrow model and approval process, but we can truly set up an approval or escrow process directly through several different payment providers, internally managed via your company on behalf of the seller and the buyer.

Mediation and Resolution Process

Typically, there needs to be an issue resolution process with an intermediate arbiter that can help the parties that have completed the deal follow standard governance. That is, when it comes to completing the receipt of the expensive item or other necessary steps and understanding the agreement that both parties made and responsibilities they contracted into.

It’s about making sure that process goes smoothly between the parties. This arbiter can be a third party, or it can be something that we can set up so that your team internally can manage it in an automated process. Most of the time there aren't a lot of issues, but whenever there are, it's really important to have a process to be able to handle it.

Considerations for Large Shipments

Large shipments can mean shipments of expensive purchases, but it can also mean shipments of large or numerous items. Most of these large shipments can require LTL or freight, or intermodal shipping with containers, railroad cars, and truck shipments. It’s about getting all of the logistics and configuration of getting those prices and the quotes etc., and potentially dealing with currency exchange, taxes, and duties on these different shipments, and the legal paperwork with making sure that the customs and duties are taken care of.

API Integrations

At Clarity, we work with third party APIs that handle this in an automated fashion for most countries and shipping providers. We also can help you integrate multiple shipping providers and processes for taxes and duties, customs, forms, etc., so that working on your custom auction website is as seamless as it can be.

Shipment Containers & Fulfillment

In some cases, we have clients who will have containers that need to be filled. They might have items from multiple auctions, and we might need to fill a certain container, be it an actual shipping container or a pallet or another form of measurement for completing a shipment. We do have the ability to have a visualizer of the different shipments and completing a certain amount of ordering to fill those shipment units fully or optimally.

Optimize the Auction Software for Your Business

These are all considerations for international auction eCommerce and being able to handle big purchases or very valuable and rare items. And dealing with all of the different scenarios involved, whether it's having validation that the purchaser has the funds, some form of escrow whenever the seller provides the items, going through an inspection process or some kind of verification of the items. For example, it's not uncommon to require that there be a certification of a diamond.

These are all pretty common processes with the auction that really are key part of the auction going smoothly. That’s why we developed our eCommerce eAuction platform to have these processes automated, rather than manual, and to be customizable to fit your business’s unique needs.

More Features for eAuction Big Purchases & Shipments

In addition to these shipping features, Clarity offers much more with our auction website development. These include:

• Multicurrency and currency conversion support for international currencies, fiat, and cryptocurrency
• Multilingual support
• Transparent or hidden participant list
• Unlimited number of users, products, categories, and subdomains/sub-marketplaces/subsites
• Flexible commission settings capability
• Advertising, including paid advertising and auto-generated ads within the site and externally
• Analytics and tracking for advertising to optimize promotions and other marketing methods

• Key Steps to Migrate to a New eCommerce Auction Platform
• How to Run an Auction Marketplace
• Auction Event Scheduling Capabilities
• Auction Private Branding Capabilities
• Online Auction Platform Development Company