Create an Auction Platform: 10 Tips for Creating a Professional Auction Portal

Everyone is familiar with online auction portals, such as the market leader eBay. Unlike a traditional online shop, an auction portal gives you the opportunity to auction items and award them to the highest bidder. On some platforms, like eBay, there is also the option to sell items immediately at a fixed price. Anyone can register on an auction platform and offer their items for auction. Payment and infrastructure are organized via the website, while shipping is handled by the seller. Auction platforms typically generate profit through fees, which are deducted from the buyer and/or seller in the form of commissions. Online auction platforms are very popular and currently enjoy high visitor traffic. If you plan to create your own auction platform, you will find seven expert tips in this article to help you succeed with your project.

The Essentials at a Glance

Examples of Well-Known Auction Portals

How Do You Create an Auction Platform?

Creating an auction platform involves the development of a complex online marketplace on which users can also place bids. The classic example of this is eBay, the world’s best-known auction platform.

What Exactly Is an Auction Portal?

Everyone knows the online platform eBay. For many years now, this provider has been the world’s largest operator of online auctions. Moreover, eBay was the first auction platform on the internet and, despite various competitors, still holds a considerable market share today. 

The goal of an auction portal is to provide users with a way to auction their items. Users can post an item online and use mechanisms similar to those of a traditional online shop. Photos are uploaded and videos are created. A product description contains all the important information about the product. Interested parties can search for items on the portal and, if interested, place bids. The platform monitors all bids and ensures that after the auction ends, the item is awarded to the bidder who placed the highest bid. Contact information, the establishment of contact, and communication are handled directly through the platform. Additionally, the buyer can make payments directly via the platform.  

On some portals, such as eBay, users also have the option to offer items for immediate purchase in addition to auctioning. Moreover, the seller may have access to various paid extras to enhance the visibility of their items. A central rating system allows buyers to rate the sellers.

An auction portal provides the opportunity to auction an item.

Tips for the Successful Development of an Auction Platform

There are many reasons to create your own auction platform. Some of these you have already learned about in this article. You have also learned that this undertaking is a very complex and demanding project. Thorough planning and preparation, as well as sufficient capital, are important factors. In this section, we present our expert tips designed to help you succeed in the development and planning of your online platform.

1. What Type of Auction Portal Do You Need?

There are a variety of different online portals. They differ in terms of functions and complexity. In addition, there are differences in how the platforms are structured. Many simple portals can be found, for example, as plugins for common CMS such as WordPress or Drupal, while more complex systems often have to be programmed from scratch.  

The first decision you must make when creating an online platform is what type of platform it will be. Should it be a basic platform with simple functions? Or do you need a platform that is somewhat more sophisticated? For professional and paid portals, you typically cannot avoid a complex and elaborate platform, as ready-made solutions and plugins usually do not offer sufficient functionality or flexibility.

You must consider in advance what goals you want to achieve with your portal and which functions the platform should or must fulfill. The decision you make here also has a lasting impact on the costs. 

The more complex and extensive the online portal, the higher the effort and, accordingly, the greater the required capital. If you plan thoroughly from the beginning, you can save money right from the start of your online platform’s development.

Before you further engage in the development of a job platform, you must be clear about what type of platform you want to create and where it is to be used. In many cases, a simple or mid-level platform is sufficient. Only in truly special cases is it necessary to have a truly complex auction platform developed from scratch.

2. Financing Your Auction Portal

The next important step you must address, which is directly related to the point mentioned above, is the financing of your online platform. The development of your portal is costly and incurs expenses that you must cover for its development – usually before your platform begins generating income. Financing is therefore an important factor to consider. 

Fundamentally, there are two possibilities. Either you have the capital to have a platform of this type developed on your own and pay the resulting costs out of your own pocket. In that case, you can start immediately and begin the development of the platform, and nothing will stand in the way of launching your project. 

In most cases, however, you will not have sufficient capital, but only a partial amount available. In this case, you must explore other financing options. One possibility is banks and credit institutions, which generally grant loans to companies without any problems. An alternative, especially here, is crowdfunding.  

This means you present your project on a crowdfunding platform such as Patreon or Kickstarter and have the development financed by interested parties in the form of pledges. For this option to work, you need a certain amount of equity and must create a prototype of your platform. Furthermore, you must use information, videos, and marketing to attract potential investors to your project and convince them to support you financially. In return, the backers receive something from you. That could be a free membership, a free listing on your platform, or something else entirely. Here, your creativity is key. Essentially, anything that can excite customers or investors is possible.

3. It’s Starting – The Launch of Your Auction Portal

Once you have developed a concept for your online portal and secured financing, the starting signal can be given. Now it’s time to get down to business, and the development of your job platform begins. It is important to work with a professional agency, such as Shopboostr. We have repeatedly accompanied the development of various online platforms, online shops, and other applications, and have been experts in the field for several years. However, for your online platform’s development to be successful, you must consider several key factors. The most important of these are:

• An excellent idea: Why should someone invest in your project? 
• A strong development team that programs the platform.
• A team for community management and the building of a community.
• Cooperation with companies and firms that will use your platform.
• A well-written whitepaper that details your project.
• Professional marketing on specialist portals and in social media.
• A strong management team.
• A professional agency that implements your ideas and concepts.

4. Your Idea and Its Implementation

For your project to be successful, you need an idea. This means you must solve a problem or offer a service that is interesting to customers and convinces investors to invest in your project. You must also consider that there are now many competing platforms of this type on the market. These competitors have been active for a long time and offer a wide range of services and functions. Often, many ideas already exist. Your idea is almost certainly already represented, so you must make it clear to investors why they should invest in your platform instead of a competitor’s project, or why they should choose you.

It is best to ask yourself whether you would invest in your own project and why, or whether you would study your own offering or choose another platform and why. Look at the problems encountered by other projects, especially those with a similar or identical offering to yours. Then consider how you want to solve these problems and outperform the competition. This will put you on the right track. The market is fiercely competitive, and there are many rivals.

In some cases, it may be necessary or advisable to specialize in a specific area. For example, you could focus on a particular group of people or profession, such as public service, students, etc. This specialization would give you significant importance compared to the numerous general platforms. Additionally, you could establish yourself as an expert in the industry.

There are auction portals that focus solely on a specific product category.

5. Start Small with the Programming

Developing a complete online platform is very complex and extensive. This is especially true if you want to have a sophisticated online portal custom-built. In this case, you cannot use a CMS or existing software and simply adapt it for your needs, which means very high costs may arise. In contrast, many CMSs are open-source software and can be used by you free of charge – you only pay for the individual customization. However, with an advanced platform, everything must be created from scratch. Programming thus consumes a large part of the budget.

We therefore recommend that you start small. Develop a prototype and the basic structure (MVA) – everything you need to promote your project and attract investors. Once you have achieved this goal, you can use the prototype to secure additional capital, with which you can continuously expand the prototype. Avoid trying to perfect everything right from the start. Otherwise, you may end up without capital and without investors because you do not have a prototype to use for fundraising and marketing.

6. Build a Team of Professional Programmers

For the programming of your online platform, you need an experienced team of professional programmers. The implementation of your portal and its underlying technology involves complex areas. Accordingly, you need various developers who not only master different programming languages but ideally are also familiar with the respective industry or niche. 

Just as the project team and advisors must convince investors, your programmers must also persuade them. The best ideas mean nothing if there is no capability to execute them. Experts and investors in the field are very knowledgeable and will pay close attention to whether your idea can indeed be implemented. For this very reason, a prototype may also be useful, as it allows your programmers to demonstrate their expertise in practice.

7. Build a Team of Partners and Experts

Before your platform can go live, you need to build a professional team. You require administrators to manage new members, registrations, possibly certificates, etc. You also need IT personnel to maintain the platform and handle security and technical issues. Additionally, you may need community managers, and so on. Most importantly, you must have a competent network of experts. This includes companies that advertise on your site, advertising partners for financing, payment providers like Stripe or PayPal that enable your visitors to make payments directly through the website, etc.

The Best-Known Auction Portals

There are already a multitude of online portals in various fields on the market. They usually already have numerous customers as well as partners and collaborations. It can therefore be challenging to establish a foothold with a new, private platform. Convincing arguments and functions that competing platforms do not offer, as well as specialization in certain areas, are effective strategies to overcome this challenge. 

Analyzing these platforms and their projects or courses gives you insight into the competition and the projects that already exist. Additionally, you gain an understanding of various online portals, their structure, and their functions. Many platforms offer the option to register for free or to test the paid features during a trial period. We recommend taking advantage of this offer so that you can best familiarize yourself with the offerings and capabilities of the competition.

eBay is the leading auction portal on the market.

Simple, Complex, or Advanced? What Makes Sense?

When developing an online platform, as you have learned, you have various options. You must decide on a concept or model. Is a simple or complex platform sufficient? Or must it be an advanced platform? And which platform makes sense? 

We cannot provide a one-size-fits-all answer to this question in this article. It depends on the project, its functions, and your individual undertaking. In most cases, in our opinion and experience, a simple or complex platform is sufficient. These already offer many functions and cover all the important options. A custom-developed, individual platform is only necessary in the rarest cases – namely when the existing simple and advanced solutions cannot provide the required functions and cannot be modified afterward.

We recommend that you have an expert advise you on this decision from the outset. Shopboostr is your expert for auction platforms, online shops, and other online platforms. Our team is happy to provide you with individual, non-binding advice, and if desired, we are also ready to accompany you throughout your project – simple, straightforward, and from the very beginning.

Conclusion and Summary

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