Category: theory
Bidding histories develop bidder trust
Last week’s post dealt with grokking that there is no functional difference between a minimum or starting bid and a reserve on an item. A post last month pointed out that it’s bad to try to be sneaky when protecting a reserve on an item and that it’s much better to be upfront with the…
Starting Internet bids are reserves, plain and simple
In a March episode of the Auction Podcast, we posited that it is wise to have a policy of starting every item at $10 for Internet bidding. If your minimum bid at a live auction is $10, set the minimum bid for the Internet bidding to be $10. For every item. For every category from…
Amazon fail
Recent website design work has caused us to do some research into the current design techniques and trends among website authors regarding web stanards. We looked into the definitive guide on the subject, Jeffrey Zeldman‘s Designing with Web Standards, and were excited to find that a third edition is coming this year. While imagining how…
Don’t shill bid. Just don’t.
Image by duncan via Flickr If you’re an auctioneer and you’re bidding on behalf of yourself or your seller, there’s nothing illegal about it provided it’s disclosed properly and that it’s not an absolute auction. However, if you’re going to do it, don’t be sneaky about it. Don’t create a fictitious name or bidding account.…
Don’t penalize Internet buyers
Our friend John Schultz wrote a great blog post this morning about the importance of ensuring that registration requirements were similar for Internet bidders and live bidders. He describes the effect of restricting Internet bidders as follows. Auction companies need to apply the same set of registration terms to both online and onsite bidders. In…