How to Build an Auction Marketplace like eBay

What is eBay : 

• Established in 1995, eBay is a well-known online marketplace.
• Users can engage in buying and selling a wide variety of products and services.
• It allows individuals and businesses to create listings, set prices, and participate in auctions.
• eBay caters to both new and used items, spanning electronics to collectibles.
• Operating in multiple countries, it serves as a global platform.
• Facilitates both consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions.
• Prominent features include user ratings, secure payment options, and a feedback system.
• eBay has a substantial global user base, connecting millions of buyers and sellers worldwide. 

What makes eBay different from other Marketplaces :

• Auction-Style Listings: eBay allows sellers to start auctions with minimum prices, creating bidding competitions that are not common on most e-commerce platforms.
• Unique and Collectible Items: eBay is known for its extensive selection of rare, vintage, and collectible products that are often hard to find elsewhere.
• Global Marketplace: eBay’s global reach means you can buy and sell items from around the world, providing access to a wide variety of products.
• Diverse Seller Community: eBay’s diverse community of individual sellers, small businesses, and larger retailers offers a wide range of products and buying options.
• Feedback System: The feedback system helps establish trust within the eBay community, allowing buyers and sellers to rate and review each other.
• eBay Stores: Sellers can open their own customized online storefronts within eBay to showcase their products.
• Buyer and Seller Protection: eBay provides protection and dispute resolution mechanisms for both buyers and sellers, creating a safer shopping environment.
• Charitable Giving: eBay for Charity allows users to support various charitable causes while buying and selling.

These features combine to make eBay a distinct and diverse platform for online shopping and selling.

Auction Listings:

eBay’s auction feature allows sellers to list items for sale at auction.

This means the seller indicates the start and duration of the auction rather than setting a fixed price.

Bidding process:

Buyers can bid on goods during the auction period. Bidding usually starts with the seller’s initial bid, and the user can gradually increase the bid.

Dynamic Pricing:

An important feature of eBay auctions is dynamic pricing. As users bid, the price of the product gradually increases until the auction ends.

At the end of the competition, the person with the highest bid will win the product.

Reserve Price:

Sellers can set a reserve price, which is the minimum amount they are willing to accept for the product.

If the price is not maintained until the end of the auction, the item will not be sold.

Auction Duration:

eBay has various auction durations, usually from a few days to a week. Sellers choose the time that suits their interests.

Proxy bidding:

eBay uses proxy bidding, where users can set the highest price they are willing to pay for an item.

The system automatically increases their bids to maintain their winning position up to the maximum bid.

Popcorn bidding:

Popcorn Bidding, also known as Dynamic Bidding, is a way of giving the bidders who were outbid an opportunity to rebid.

Enable this option, and enter the time within which you want to extend the auction deadline. Lastly, enter the number of times this whole popcorn bidding scenario can reoccur.

Sniping:

Sniping is a strategy where players place their highest target near the end of the match, preventing others from attacking them at the same time.

Transparency:

eBay’s auction system is transparent and users can see the current high bid and the number of bids placed on an item. This transparency helps build trust among users.

eBay’s auction feature adds to its unique business platform by providing users with a powerful and engaging way to buy and sell a variety of items.

An Auction Marketplace like eBay requires effort, but with the help of Shopify, Webkul Multivendor MarketPlace, and Webkul Product Auction app, it becomes an achievable goal.

We’ll explore how you can use these tools to transform your e-commerce business into a dynamic business with potential similar to eBay.

Furthermore, you can import product listings from this popular auction marketplace using WooCommerce eBay integration.

Multi-Vendor Marketplace is a versatile software application that turns your online store into a successful e-commerce business and can also create a Multivendor Marketplace.

Multivendor Marketplace is the ultimate tool to convert your shop into a fully-functioning marketplace. Through this, you can add sellers to your online store and keep track of their sales.

Within this app, we have introduced numerous “Feature Apps” that provide additional benefits to the admin as well as to the sellers.

These feature apps are divided into multiple categories as per their functionalities. 

As soon as you install the app, you need to visit the “Feature Apps” section of your store and activate it from your end.

On the upper right corner of the admin dashboard, you will get the “three dots”. You can click on it to visit the “Feature Apps” section of the app.

Here’s how it plays an important role in platforms like eBay:

• Joining the selling business: Through this app, you can not only sell products as a store but also invite external sellers to join your business. Save your products. This opens the door to many things.
• Management: As a store manager, you manage products, vendors, and inventory. This ensures quality control and consistency across platforms.
• Product Visibility: The seller’s products are not immediately visible in the probe. Approval of system administrators must be obtained before the product is released. This feature checks the quality of your website.
• Seller Plans: The ability to create a selling plan that sellers must purchase when signing up to ensure a revenue model. Sellers can choose the plan according to their needs.
• Commission Structure: Managers can create a work structure to earn a percentage​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​.

To replicate eBay’s auction functionality, you need the Product Auction App for Shopify. It brings the joy of competition to your platform through products.

This creates a sense of competition and can increase the final selling price.

Features :

• Management: Admin have the flexibility to ensure competition for the specific products they choose. This way, not all items need to be auctioned, giving you control over the auction.
• Real-time monitoring: The application allows managers to monitor all quotes directly from the application. This real-time monitoring ensures the auction process goes smoothly.
• Admin can create and manage auctions for any product.
• Make the auction process legitimate on your store by enabling the Join Fee feature.
• Enable the proxy-bidding feature within the app to have a less time-consuming bidding process in the app.
• Also, allow customers to place a normal & proxy bid with a single button. Explore!
• This app also includes the feature of popcorn bidding.
• Real-time bid update:- Once a bidder places a bid for a product, the bids will get updated on the auction window page for all the other bidders who are live on auction.
• Admin can create multiple auctions at a time just by uploading them via CSV.
• You can configure your own SMTP to send emails to the customers from your own mail engine.
• Automatic emails are sent to the winner & loser of the bid.
• Bid On Multiple Units feature, where admin can enable the bidder to bid for a number of units of product.
• This app also includes Multiple Winner & Autopay features
• Option to manually end the bid, also, to start auction automatically. 

Create a “Sign up as a Seller” option on your website with the help of the Multivendor Marketplace App.

Open the Multivendor Marketplace App and Go to the “Configuration”, click on “Instructions for Marketplace” option.

Copy the Public URL link

In your Shopify Admin panel, Go to the “Online Store option”, then select “Navigation”, add a “menu Item” in “Main Menu”,

type the name of your menu item “sign up as a seller” or like that 

Then paste the link that you have previously copied from the Seller Dashboard in the MVM app and save it.

Sellers Configuration :

All the Seller-related configuration can be done from this menu from the Admin Panel of MVM.

From here, you can allow your sellers to fulfill items, enable the option to auto-approve the added sellers, allow sellers to view customers’ details, and much more.

To know about the Seller Updates, Kindly refer: https://webkul.com/blog/seller-updates-multi-vendor-marketplace-for-shopify/

This is the Seller Home Page Dashboard, seller can manage his product, add his/her product, delete it, and manage the shipping process,

the seller can also track the product and also manage the price of a product from each given menu.

The admin has to set the permissions of configurations from the admin dashboard of MVM then only the seller can use all these features.

To check more about configuration you can access this link:https://webkul.com/blog/shopify-multivendor-marketplace-new-theme-launched/#configuration

You can access Product Auction for Seller App Integration from the Multivendor app by clicking three dots and selecting feature apps.

Features of Product Auction for Seller App Integration :

• Using this Feature App, the admin can enable the Sellers to create auctions on Products.
• Sellers can add auctions on products from the Seller Panel of the Multivendor app.
• Admin can remove auction set on any product.
• Sellers can edit auction details from their end.
• Sellers can see the complete information related to bids and auction winners.

You can learn more about Product Auction Integration at: https://webkul.com/blog/shopify-multivendor-marketplace-product-auction-integration/

Admin can see the auction details in the Auction menu and you can start your auction manually, by clicking “Start Manually”, or enabling Automatic Bidding.

“Configure Frontend” to manage the frontend view of your website.

Admin can implement Auction Block on the Product Page, by auto-injecting code or by manually injecting code.

This is how frontend will look like :

Now, a customer can place his/her bid by filling in the amount and clicking “Place My Bid”.

You can also show a menu for auction products in the front end of your website by going to the Navigation section in your online store and

then “edit menu“, “add a menu” with the name Auction Products or similar, and “save” it.

This is how it will look in the front end.

You can also display “View your bids” on the customer account page, auto injecting code or by manually injecting code.

This is how the front end will look.

Using the Multivendor Marketplace Product Auction for Seller feature app, You as an admin can enable your sellers to add auctions on products,

and thus, customers will bid on the product of their choice.

The seller can add auctions from here, go to “Products” and then click on “Add Product”.

Clicking on the “Add Auction” button, You will be asked to enter auction details such as Time Duration, Base and reserve price of the auction, and so on. 

While adding an auction on any product, the Seller needs to enter the following details:

• Auction Duration i.e. Start and End date & time of auction.
• Add Base Price i.e. Price from where the bidding will start.
• Add Reserve Price i.e. Price where your product bidding should be reached.

The Seller can also view the Auction from here by clicking three dots, and then clicking on “View Auction”.

Clicking on the View Auction button, the seller can view the complete information related to bids & auction winners.

Add Auction To Global Products

The seller needs to visit the seller panel>Go to the Global Products section>Select the product and click Create Auction in the Action menu.

Frontend view

This is all about the Product Auction for Sellers feature of the Multivendor App.

Similarly, you can also add auctions to global products from the admin panel of the Multi-vendor app

You can configure all your auction settings from here, go to “Configuration” and then select “Auction Config”.

Proxy Bidding

You can also enable Proxy Bidding, Proxy Bidding is a concept in which the system automatically bids on your behalf up to the maximum bid amount that you have chosen.

This is simple to make the online auction process much easier and less time-consuming. The Proxy Bid is the Maximum Bid and not the Current Bid.

How does Proxy Bidding actually work?

Let’s understand this with a scenario: Suppose an auction starts with $10 as the starting bid. Now, bidder A places a proxy bid of $20.

So, now the system will automatically start bidding from $10 up to $20 on behalf of bidder A.

Now, if bidder B comes to place a bid, he will see the current bid of $10.

Suppose, Bidder B places a bid of $15. Then, he will be immediately outbid by bidder A with a new minimum bid of $16.

Thus to outbid bidder A, some other bidder has to place a bid of $20.01 or more.

Now, if bidder B places a bid of $20 then it will be equivalent to bidder A’s maximum bid. But still, bidder A will be the highest bidder and the new minimum bid will become $21.

So, this is how the flow of proxy/automatic bidding goes.

You can also do Seller Restriction, Restricting seller to make changes, This is only for Multivendor (MVM) side.

Configure the widget :

You can also configure the widget, in which you can select the layout from your own.

You can learn more about Product Auction App, you can access: https://webkul.com/blog/shopify-product-auction/

By combining the Webkul Multi-Vendor Marketplace application with the Webkul Product Auction application, you can create a comprehensive e-commerce platform similar to eBay.

Sellers can list their products and customers can create an online business by participating in exciting contests.

By managing product quality, cost, and performance standards, you can design your platform to meet your unique vision and business goals.

When you start the journey of building a platform like

eBay, remember that providing good platform support and good customer experience for customers is also important to achieve success in online business.

With the right tools and strategies, your e-commerce business can become a hub for buyers and sellers, just like eBay.