Product Auction for Shopify

Product Auction App for Shopify enables the feature of a bid or auction on your e-commerce website.

Moreover, the admin can enable the bidding feature for the products they want to put up for auction and, at the same time, monitor all the bids placed on the store directly from the app.

The Product Auction App enables merchants to offer product bidding and auction functionality on their e-commerce store.

Additionally, it helps merchants seamlessly integrate and manage auction features, thereby providing customers with an engaging bidding experience.

Therefore, install the Product Auction App today and start offering an engaging bidding experience to your customers.

Check the introduction video of the product auction app for Shopify:

How to add an auction in the product auction app for Shopify:

Features

After that, you need to select the plan as per your need as shown in the below image.

Currently, we are having three different plans: Basic plan, Executive plan and Pro plan.

Pause plan: If you do not want to use the app for a while, you can pause the plan.

You will be charged 7USD per month for the paused plan.

Upgrade or Downgrade Plans

You can now upgrade or downgrade your Product Auction App plan directly from the app according to your business requirements.

Once the payment is done for the plan, the Product Auction will be listed here:

Click it to redirect to the Auction page.

On the home page, you will find several code snippets that you need to add to the relevant .liquid files and other HTML/CSS files to display the Auction Bar on the storefront.

Enter your email and upload your shop logo in this section. The shop logo’s image dimension should be 197 x 52. Extensions Supported: jpg, jpeg, png, JPG, JPEG, PNG.

Configure the auction/bidding configurations like enable/disable start auction automatically, send automatic emails to the bidders to notify their loss.

Display purchase now option on auction widget : Display purchase now button on auction widget till current bid is less than buy now amount.

(Note: Make sure that the joining fee and booking fee is disabled.)

Place bid From Collection Page : From this Customer can place bid from collection page.

Stop Auction if Product Goes Out of Stock: Stop the auction when the auctioned product goes out of stock.

Capped Amount for Bidders: Set a maximum bidding amount. Require bidders to get approval before they can bid above the capped amount.

Note: The feature does not work when you set the capped amount to 0.

Declare Multiple Winners : Enable this feature to declare more than one winner for auctioned product.

Window For Winner To Pay : Auction winners will able to purchase the winning product within the configured time.

Number Of Days For Which Finished Auction Details Will Be Visible : After an auction ends, the auction details will be visible for entered number of days.
Note: set -1 for infinite.

Show Minimum Bidding Amount Allowed : From here you can toggle Minimun Bidding Amount Allowed message.

Highlight Current Bid On Collection and Product Page : Enabling this setting, you can decide the color of “current bid” to Highest bidder, participated bidders and non-participated one’s.

Bidding Username : Allow users to enter their bidding username that will be visible publicly to all the auction bidders.

Restrict consecutive bidding : Enable to restrict bidders to consecutive bidding.

Allow Bidders To Hide Their Name From Others : Bidders Can Hide Their Name From Other Bidders And Display As Anonymous.

Joining Fee Rule : Select Joining Fee Policy Type
A – Customer have to pay joining fee for each auction.
B – Customer have to pay joining fee once for any auction or Tag.

Enable Multi Currency Feature : Here you can enable multi currency and this will provide feature to customer to bid in multiple currency.

• Product Auction for Shopify: Proxy Bidding Feature
• Popcorn Bidding Feature: Product Auction
• Product Auction for Shopify: Bid On Multiple Units feature
• Multiple Winner Feature:- Product Auction for Shopify | Multiple Winner & Autopay

We have introduced a new feature that allows the Admin to restrict consecutive bidding in auctions. Another bidder must outbid a bidder before they can place a new bid.

Bidders cannot place consecutive bids unless another bidder outbids them first.

For this kindly go to the Product Auction Admin panel >> Configuration >> Auction Configuration

You can now configure the color to highlight the current bid on your auction products.

You can have different colors for the bids on the collection & product page for the customer who leads the auction, participated in the auction, or has not yet participated in the auction.

To configure this, you need to visit the Auction Configuration menu of the admin panel>>Configure the color of your choice>>Save the settings.

This is how it appears on the collection page of your store:

This is how it appears on the product page of your store:

You can now have the option to show a confirmation pop-up on the product page when a customer places a bid. Just visit the Auction Configuration and enable this option.

This is how the confirmation pop-up appears once a bid is placed.

When you enable the ‘Mandate Customer Address and Phone Number’ configuration –

ustomers who have not yet added their address and phone number to their profile will be prompted to provide the required information when they visit the website.

A pop-up form will appear when they try to place a bid. The form will require them to enter their name, address, and contact number, and then click “Submit” to save the information.

Once submitted, the provided details will be automatically updated in their account section.

If you enable another configuration under ‘Mandate Customer Address and Phone Number’, a validation check will be enforced on the website.

Any customer who tries to place a bid without having their address or phone number saved in their profile will encounter a validation prompt.

They will see a pop-up message:

“Phone number or address details are missing. Kindly fill in these details to place your bid.”

Upon clicking the “Click to enter these details” button in the pop-up, the customer will be redirected to their account page, where they can update and complete the required information.

CHANGE AUCTION WIDGET LAYOUT

You can now change the layout of the auction widget shown on the product description page.

This is how the widgets look:

You can now configure the format of the “End Date” of the auctions on your products. For this, You just need to visit the Configuration>>Widget Configuration.

Configure the date format and click the Save button.

That’s all.

Change or reset the look of the front end and design by changing the color of the background, themes, button text, label, and much more.

Label Configuration:

Edit the labels of buttons on the front and rename them as per your requirements such as changing the label of time end, bid end date, place my bid and much more.

Mail Configuration:

Configure the after win, purchase reminder, after proxy loses mail content such as mail subject and content. You can also disable these different event’s email status.

SMTP Configuration: 

Click here!

Now, the admin can set the default bid rules for the auctioned products of his store.

From this, you can maintain the gap between the bidding amount.
If no specific rule is defined for a particular bid, the nearest applicable increment rule will be applied.

For this, visit Product Auction App > Configuration > Auction Configuration

The added bid rules will be by default added to all your future auction. Moreover, you can alter the by-default bid rule for any individual auction while adding/editing it.

Once you will click on View Auction section, it will list the products with their auction’s start and end date, current bid, and the auction status.

Click ‘view’ to see a detailed structure of product bidding history, bidder details and even the remaining time for auctions in the running phase.

Clicking on add auction button will let you create an auction for that product by filling up auction form containing bid start-end date and time and much more.

After creating auctions, you can view all its entered details.

Add multiple auctions at one go by following these steps:

Product Auction App Backend > Auctions > Add Auctions

Further, on the redirected page, click on the Select Products button.

Now, select the products on which you want to add auction from the product listing pop-up & click on Add. Refer:

Furthermore, fill the add auction form with the required details as usual.

The system sends an email to the admin once it successfully adds the auction to all the selected products.

If the system fails to update the auction for any product, the email will include the relevant details along with the reason for the failure.

Now, if the admin wants to update, delete and finish the auctions in bulk then he can do it from Product Auction App >> Auctions >> select the auctions >> Click on “bulk auctions”

From the bulk actions, you have “Update auction”, “delete auction” and “finish auction” options to select.

Suppose the admin clicks on ‘Update Auction’. Then, the admin can enable the ‘Update Time Duration’ and ‘Update Pricing’ toggle buttons to modify the auction’s duration and pricing.

Finally, click the ‘Update’ button below to save the changes.

To know more:

• Product Auction for Shopify: Add Auction to Product
• Product Auction for Shopify: Edit & Delete Bid

Product Auction for Shopify: CSV Feature

You can now export all the auctions from the app via CSV. You need to visit the App>>Go to Auctions menu>>In the Bulk Action>>Click Export Auction (in the drop-down menu).

This way, you can export the auction CSV from the app and send it to the email configured in the app.

Select whether you want to export the specifically selected auctions or export auctions based on their end date.

Select the Auction type from drop-down menu.

Click the ‘Proceed’ button to export the Auction CSV and send it to the admin’s email address.

As per our app’s email policy, you will incur additional charges when your email usage exceeds the threshold limit. You just need to proceed to the payment page and accept the capped amount.

Note:- You will incur additional charges only when you use emails beyond the included limit.

Important Points:-

• The renewal date will be the last date of each month.
• You will be charged for the emails sent up to the current date.
• Additionally, the final charges will be calculated based on your total usage through the last day of the month.
• Once your email count exceeds the limit of 2,000 free emails, you will incur additional charges based on your usage, calculated per 1,000 emails.
• However, if you use your own SMTP server, you will not incur any additional charges for sending emails beyond the free limit.

Product Auction for Shopify: How to Paste Codes in Liquid File

To display the auction on the front end for selected products, follow the process below:

• Click on Online Store.
• Go To Themes.
• Click on the Action button on the top right.

• Select the Edit code button.

Then paste the below-given codes in the files as stated below.

In case you are using Online store 2.0 (Example- Dawn), you need to follow the steps to add the codes.

To show auction block on product page, add the below code into main-product.liquid template file:-

<div id="wk-auction" prod-id="{{ product.id }}" cust-id="{{ customer.id }}"></div>

Paste code at the start of template:-

{% unless product.tags contains "wk_auction" %}

Paste code at the end of template:-

 {% endunless %}

To add Auction Configuration to your theme, add the codes to layout/theme.liquid file:-

Add code after <body> tag:

{% render 'wk_auction_config' %}

To hide “Add to Cart” button on product page, add the codes to sections/main-product.liquid file:-

Add attribute: class='wk_hide_element' and style='display: none'

Paste code at the start of block:-

 {% unless product.tags contains "on_auction" %}

Paste code at the end of block:-

{% endunless %}

“View your bids” button on customer account page, add the codes to customers/account.liquid file:-

<div id="wk-auction" cust-id="{{ customer.id }}"></div>

Display auction timer and bids on collection page, add codes to snippets/product-card.liquid file:-

Paste code at the start of template:

{% unless product_card_product.tags contains "wk_auction" %}

Paste code at the end of template:-

{% endunless %}

<div class="wk-category-auction" data-prod="{{ product_card_product.id }}" cust-id="{{ customer.id }}"></div>

The bidders menu provided the list of all the customers who have placed their bids on the auctions.

Here, we have provided the options for the admin to Ban bidder

The admin has the option to ban the bidders which he seem unfit to place bids on the auctions set up by them.

Once you enable this configuration, the Admin’s store will create the current bid for the auctioned product as a metafield.

The Admin can view the meta field on their Shopify store

Once an auction ends the last current bid’s value for the auctioned product will be stored in the metafield.

When the system creates a new auction on a product, it updates the metafield value to the current bid of the new auction.

Purpose – This meta field can be used by the Admin to create a filter on the collection page.

Note – The functionality will exclusively cater to clients who are subscribed to the Shopify Plus plan and have opted for the pro plan of the Product Auction application

Bidders can view a brief history of their bids by clicking the number of bids section located just above ‘Place My Bid’.

History of all the bids made by bidders can be viewed by visiting my account section of the eCommerce store.

Clicking on View your bids button on my account page of the customer will make him view the history of bids made along with current bids,

lost bids and won bids in separate dedicated sections.

Winning flow is simple for a product auction product. As soon as the Auction is finished, the Winner is declared automatically based on the admin configuration.

Winner gets the automatic email from admin that “You have Won an Auction. Proceed further and buy this product”. Admin can modify winner email content from configuration.

As soon as the winner clicks the ‘Buy Now’ button, the system redirects them to their customer account page. From there, they can view the details of the auction they’ve won.

The ‘Buy Now’ button appears next to the corresponding auction product, allowing the winner to proceed with the purchase easily.

Once the winner clicks the Buy Now button, the system redirects them to the cart page, where they can proceed with checkout.

Note: Winner Product at Shopify Back-end

When Admin creates the Auction Product, our app creates a product having the name Shopify Auction during initial configuration.

As an admin, you should never delete or move this product to the Draft state, as doing so will cause the Product Auction feature to stop working.

Additionally, this product must remain available on the Online Store sales channel at all times.

Moreover, if the product is not Active or is Disabled, the checkout page displays an “Out of Stock” error to auction winners.

The system creates the auction product as a variation; however, it applies the auction widget to the actual product that customers see on the front end.

As a result, the customer places the bid on the actual product and, if declared the winner, receives an email prompting them to purchase the variation product.

Now, the admin can place bids on behalf of customers using a CSV file.
for this, go to the AUCTIONS section >> click on “Place bid”

Now, you will have the option to upload a CSV file to bid place on behalf of the customer and you will find an option to download a sample CSV file

but go through instructions for the CSV file then upload the CSV file to place a bid.

Now merchant can restrict consecutive normal and proxy bidding.

In order to enable this feature you need to navigate in product auction app configuration >> auction confiq >> restrict consecutive bidding

The Product Auction plan includes support for up to 500 live auctions running simultaneously.

If your business requires more than 500 live auctions at the same time, you can easily extend this limit by enabling the Over Limit Auction feature available in the Product Auction app.

Once this feature is enabled, you can create and run more than 500 live auctions on your store.

For every auction beyond the included 500 live auction limit, an additional charge of $0.06 USD per auction will apply.

For example, if you want to run 1,000 live auctions simultaneously, simply enable the Over Limit Auction feature.

The first 500 live auctions are covered under your plan, while the remaining 500 auctions will be billed at $0.06 USD per auction.

How to Enable the Over Limit Auction Feature

To enable this feature, navigate to:

Product Auction Dashboard → Configuration → Auction Configuration → Enable “Over Limit Auction feature”

When an auction ends, the system declares the highest bidder as the winner.

Subsequently, if the winning bidder successfully completes the purchase, the Product Auction app updates the status to ‘Purchased’ accordingly.

However, in some cases, even though the product status appears as ‘Purchased’ in the app, the ‘View’ button—which links to the order page—may not be visible in the Winner Details section.

If the ‘View’ button is missing, the system has recorded the product as purchased by the winner but has not yet synced the order with the customer’s account or the store.

Therefore, the order details may not be available in the respective account or store.

This may have occurred either because the customer used a different email during checkout, or possibly due to a sync failure resulting from some other issue..

As a result, the ‘Purchased’ status will not appear on the winner’s account, and the ‘Buy Now’ option will still be visible.

To resolve this issue, we have provided a feature called ‘Reconcile Order’ in the Product Auction app, which helps manually sync the order.

You can access this feature by navigating to:
Product Auction App > Auctions > Reconcile Action > Reconcile Orders

How it works:

When you click on ‘Reconcile Order’, a pop-up will appear where you can select the desired date range.

After clicking ‘Proceed’, the system attempts to reconcile the order if the winning bidder purchased the product.

Once reconciliation is successful:
The product status will be marked as ‘Purchased’.

A ‘View’ button will appear in the Winner Details section. Clicking on this button will redirect you to the corresponding order for the product.

The order will also appear as ‘Purchased’ on the customer’s account page.

In addition, you will receive a confirmation email with a CSV file attached.

This file will contain the details of –

All reconciled orders, including the auction ID, the email address of the customer assigned to the order, and, additionally, the email address used during checkout.

Furthermore, all these details will help you keep a complete record of the reconciled orders.

Auction ID

Customer Email (Assigned To)

Customer Email (Order With)

This process ensures proper alignment of all auction order records and effectively resolves any discrepancies between auction wins and order creation.

If you want to manage orders either within the store or outside the store, we provide a ‘Manage Orders’ configuration in the Product Auction app, through which you can select your preferred option.

When you set ‘Manage Orders’ to Within the store, the winning product can be purchased directly through the store using the standard ‘Buy Now’ option.

In this case, Shopify will handle the order processing as usual.

However, when you set ‘Manage Orders’ to Outside of the store, the winner will purchase the product directly from the seller or admin outside of the app.

Please note that this feature is primarily designed for the Multivendor Marketplace.

In this kind of setup, individual sellers typically prefer to auction their own products and, furthermore, manage their sales independently.

In the ‘Outside of the store’ setup, instead of the ‘Buy Now’ button, the winner (customer) will see a ‘View Details’ button.

When clicked, it will immediately display the vendor’s details—such as name, email, phone number, and address—for quick reference.

We’ve introduced a new feature for upcoming auction products.

With this update, you can now display upcoming auction products on the checkout page. To learn more, check out our detailed blog here.

Moreover, you can use the following link to access the demo of this app:
https://auction-10.myshopify.com/pages/demo

If you need any kind of support/consultancy, then please raise a ticket at http://webkul.uvdesk.com/ or drop a mail at [email protected]

Thanks for reading this blog!!! 🙂