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www.ecommerce-guide.com/resources/product_reviews/article.php/202571
By Kevin Reichard September 16, 1999 A quiet force in the online-auction world, Bidfind has the ability to host auctions and includes a mechanism for incorporating outside auctions in its listings, making it one tool worth investigating for businesses that want to establish or expands their online auctions. When you first log into BidFind, you''re presented with a list of auction categories that mirrors most other auction listings, such as those found on eBay. But there''s one difference: almost all of the items offered for sale are actually offered from third-party sites. The third-party sites are mostly independent sites, but some of those sites are in fact run by BidFind. How It WorksLet''s say a collector is searching for minor-league-baseball collectibles. He or she would enter the phrase in the search engine and view the ensuing results. The listings incorporate a brief description of an item, as well as the status of the auction; if the shopper is enticed by the slection offered in the results, he can click through to the Web site hosting the actual auction. BidFind offers auctions on two levels: a hosting program where you create you own HTML front end for managing auctions (which is similar to any other Web-hosting service under the sun) or through a turnkey auction site entirely hosted by BidFind. The turnkey site is what should be appealing to most businesses. It''s built around a SQL database for storing product and user information, with all posting and bidding of items done in real time. (Since the setup of an auction system is wide open, you could in theory contract with BidFind to connect its SQL database to any information you may have stored in your own product databases.) BidFind provides the usual standard categories found in most auctions, or businesses can specify their own specific categories. All the standard settings found in most auction situations are available including: starting bid, reserve price (the minimum winning bid), quantity of items up for bid, the length of the auction, and more. Information associated with the item includes a title, an item number, descriptions, and e-mail address of the seller (all of which can be searched by buyers via a search engine). Both sellers and buyers can see all bidding details: starting time, ending time, bid history, current bid, and number of bids. Sellers can enable proxy bidding on all posted items, where they can set a maximum bid for an item and the system will automatically counter a higher bid until they are the high bidder or the maximum bid is reached. HTML tags or photographs can be added to enhanced a product listing. If an item fails to sell, users (sellers) can relist it using information already stored on the system. E-mail capabilities offered by BidFind to sellers include e-mail notification when an item receives a bid. Buyers can sign up to be notified via e-mail when desired items are offered for bid, as well as when they''re outbid in a current auction. The system manages tools for providing information about sellers to buyers, including your listing history and a current set of items for sale. In addition to auctions, you can list items in a classified-ad area. If you have an existing auction site, you''ll want to consider linking your auctions with BidFind''s. BidFind uses "bot" technology to scan information from associated auction sites (at this time, over 325 sites are indexed twice a day) and presents listings to users. While the BidFind bot technology should work with most Web auction sites, you will want to make sure that your categories match the extensive list managed by BidFind (and, in fact, many auction sites create specific item-lists that are incorporated by BidFind bots). The BidFind Web site claims that it manages over 200,000 click-through per month. Despite the media''s preoccupation with eBay, the online-auction world is still a fragmented one. Using BidFind to extend the reach of your current auctions makes good business sense, as any move that expands your potential audience is worth pursuing. Pros: High-traffic Web site; participation is possible on many levels. Cons: Auction formats are limited when compared to more advanced packages. |
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