Auction Factory Tutorial User's "HOW TO" Guide This tutorial will show you how to use Auction Factory from the user perspective. Author: Igor Mihaljko Date: 16. March 2008
Auction Factory Tutorial
Greetings dear user! This tutorial will cover basics of Auction Factory from user perspective. I will try to explain how can user create auction and maintain it, how can auction be accessed and how bids can be placed. Let’s start. The first thing user must do to be able to use Auction Factory is to provide details about himself. The following form will pop up for the first time of accessing to Auction Factory from the front end of the site.
After you entered personal data you can create new auction. You can do that by clicking on “My Auctions” in the menu and than on button “New” on the right side in the main area of the site.
Author: E-mail: Date:
Igor Mihaljko mihha@inet.hr 16.03.2008
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Auction Factory Tutorial
You will be presented with series of screens located on tabbed buttons. Each screen has some configuration data to be filled. The first tab has some basic auction details to be filled. Please, fill in all asked data with care and understanding. The more precise details of your auction will be, the more bids you can win for auction. There are some settings that you cannot change after starting an auction. It is done on purpose to avoid abuses from auctioneers or bidders.
Title, Initial Price, BuyItNow, Auction Type (public/private), Start/End Date cannot be changed.
If you made a mistake on an auction you can cancel it, then go to My auctions, choose archived auctions and republish it. Or just make a new one. Since an auction system has a potential risk in being abused, it's quite normal that there are some restrictions. In the end those kinds of restrictions should be a benefit to the admin, and also to the enduser.
Author: E-mail: Date:
Igor Mihaljko mihha@inet.hr 16.03.2008
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Auction Factory Tutorial
In the next Tab you can upload as many pictures as the administrator of the site is allowing (setting in administration). Mind the Main picture that will be displayed also in the auction list (resized according to the administrator setting).
The most important Tab is the "Other settings". In order to publish your auction you must specify a timeframe in that the auction is active (not longer than the amount of months set by admin in backend!!). Also you can specify an external link that is relevant for your product (for example a link to the producers’ site, or for a website auction the link to the site itself). Choose the Appropriate Currency and initial price (choose 0 if none).
Set up if you would like the auction to have a BIN price (Buy It Now price).
Auction type is mandatory - if you choose public, every bidder can see the competitors bid and so know who is likely to be the winner. If you choose private, then only the auctioneer (you) can see all the bids, and the bidders make "blind" bids.
Author: E-mail: Date:
Igor Mihaljko mihha@inet.hr 16.03.2008
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Auction Factory Tutorial
This type of auction resembles the auction "in an envelope". If you like the system to choose the highest bid as winner at the expiration of your auction, then click "Fully automatic auction". This minimizes your input during the auction. It's click and wait. All this options are NOT editable after publishing the auction. This should minimize misunderstandings and changing condition during auction. If some conditions are no longer actual, just cancel the Auction and republish it under new conditions. The republishing will use the info you entered for this auction as a template and create a new one. The next two fields are informational fields for your buyers to take notice. You can specify what kind of payment type you would like to receive, and the shipment conditions if any.
Last but not least, there are some tweakings you can do with your auction:
You can inhibit the pictures, so they don't show, You can choose to auto accept BIN Price (then by BIN bidding, the auction closes and the BIN bidder is choosen as winner), or you can choose to accept it manually, so you as the auctioneer will recieve only an email notification regarding the BIN bid. Also you can choose to hide the number of bidders in the Auction info or the Max reached price.
Author: E-mail: Date:
Igor Mihaljko mihha@inet.hr 16.03.2008
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Auction Factory Tutorial
After applying your auction the following screen with auction details will show up.
Now, if you click on “Auctions” in the menu, you can see all published auctions together with basic details about auction.
Author: E-mail: Date:
Igor Mihaljko mihha@inet.hr 16.03.2008
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Auction Factory Tutorial
When you click on the title of auction,
details screen about auction will be presented to you.
From here you can place bid for auction,
Author: E-mail: Date:
Igor Mihaljko mihha@inet.hr 16.03.2008
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Auction Factory Tutorial
view list of already placed bids
or send a message to auction owner
Author: E-mail: Date:
Igor Mihaljko mihha@inet.hr 16.03.2008
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Auction Factory Tutorial
When you place your bid, it will be shown on auction details page:
If you are the owner of current auction, you can accept current bid by clicking on “Accept” link in the list o bids for current auction.
If you have any messages from bidders you can answer them here by clicking on “Reply” button in the list of messages.
Author: E-mail: Date:
Igor Mihaljko mihha@inet.hr 16.03.2008
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Auction Factory Tutorial
Message will pop up for you to confirm do you really want to accept this bid.
This will end one auction cycle. The rest is up to you and your bidder to agree on payment and delivery of goods or services. I hope that you will find this short tutorial helpful and that you will be able easily to use this great component and feature on going-natural.com site. For any question, I am here to try to answer them.
Author: E-mail: Date:
Igor Mihaljko mihha@inet.hr 16.03.2008
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