CMS like Wordpress enables the quick building of a website with unique and customized functionality. You can create an Auction site just within a few hours using WordPress.

This article shows how we can create an auction site like eBay using WordPress platform. We’ll also discuss some related topics regarding the best practices which should be utilized for a successful auction site.

•How to get the best domain name
•How to choose the best hosting service for your auction website
•How you will set up your add-on
•How you can add new auction and manage the previous auction will be discussed

Setting up the Website

Selection of the most suitable platform for your Auction site is the very first and the most important step forward.

WordPress provides two basic services namely:

WordPress.com AND

WordPress.org

WordPress.com is a free hosted service where one can run a WordPress blog or website without paying any charge but with limited functionality. While WordPress.org provides custom software that can be downloaded and install on your own web server.

We recommend using WordPress.org which offers more features directly from WordPress plugin development company.

It is very important to choose a good development Company for your online auction store. Only an experienced development firm can help you design the exact layout required.

For e-commerce sites, WordPress launched a plugin named Woocommerce, which gained considerable success all around the world and made Woocommerce development more prominent and widely used.

As far as a domain name is concerned a domain name can cost as much as $14.99 for a year and hosting costs $7.99/month, while SSL certificate costs US$69.99/year. Bluehost hosting company might be a better option for you as they are officially recommended by WordPress and they offer discounts also.

A total of 98 versions of WordPress have been released till date with 5.2 being the latest.

WordPress Plugin for Auctions

As we have discussed, WordPress has developed a plugin for e-commerce, we would recommend Yith Woocommerce Auction plugin. You can just install and activate it as follows.

YITH WooCommerce auction is a paid plugin. For a single site license, you might need to pay between 60 to 81 Euros. After the payment, you can download the plugin and get the necessary documents and a year’s support and updates.

After the activation of the YITH WooCommerce Auction Plugin, you need to visit the plugin and click on the license activation block to activate it by entering its license key. (This information will be available on your account on the plugin’s website)

The plugin comes with the default settings that you can use without altering it, but if you like to customize it, you can adjust it according to your wish. You can configure or adjust the settings by going to >YITH Plugin >> Auction.

Here you can set the following:

• Option to show or hide auction on the shop page.
• Option to show or hide out of stock items.
• Option to hide or show closed auction on the shop page.
• Option to hide or show not started auction product and others on the shop page.
• Option to allow adding auction product and others to cart.
• Option to either show encrypted or complete username in bidding tab.

Adding an Auction Item

WooCommerce has built-in products adding an option that makes it very easy to add auction items for sale.

It is a very simple process of just adding the item to be auctioned as a new WooCommerce product as per the following scenario:

>Go to the Products Page >Click on Add New Product Page.

The auction setting can be implemented by selecting the option ‘Auction’ which is next to the product option. And from there the starting auction price, bid up, the minimum increment amount, the reserve price and the buy now function can be set.

The date and time the auction will go live must also be set and at times grace period must be added after the original auction date expires.

With this in place, publishing your auction is the next important thing to be done and it will be immediately available in the WooCommerce shop page and they will be highlighted with an icon for easy identification as an auction item.

About 30% of the top 10 million websites use WordPress globally.

Managing your Auctions

The spirit of an auction website is that you can add items for auction at any time, and they become live on your website immediately or until the scheduled time.

So, in case you decide to go offline for few hours and want the auction to start after you left, you can set the time you want for the auction to start at, and whenever the auction starts, registered users can start bidding even in your absence.

WordPress has made the plugin in such a way that the timer will be shown next to the item to be sold, and the current bid or the highest bid can visibly be seen and they too can add their bid.

The previous bid will be displayed with a partially encrypted username. And you can remove any bid at any time, or edit the details of the product to be auctioned.

At the end of the auction, the highest bidder will have his price automatically and get the item bided for him. An auction can come to its end before the time ends if a bidder decides to offer the buy now price stated by you, and the product will automatically add to their cart.

All information about the latest bid, grace time and auction end time will be sent via email notification to anyone participating in the bidding. The final winner will receive notification of being eligible to pay for the item.

Allow Other Users to Add Auction Items

You can also allow other users to add their own product for auction. The problem though is that the YITH WooCommerce auction plugin will not allow users to add their own auction products. WooCommerce assumes that you are the only one selling and as such only you can add products.

After setting your website as an online marketplace, other users who are interested can now apply and become a seller on your website. Their items will need your authorization before appearing on the front page of your website for auctioning.

At the end of the bidding and a winner has been announced, you then stand to get your commission from their sales.

Mastering WordPress to Promote your Auction Site

WordPress is definitely the best website building framework in the world. Using and understanding these features is very easy and you can easily customize these features to suit best that you want without much stress.

Search online for the best WooCommerce themes, WooCommerce plugins and WordPress plugins, it is an important factor and the best way to improve your speed and performance with WordPress.

Conclusion

Building an auction website like eBay using WordPress is very easy. We thanks WordPress for numerous easy-to-use functions and thousands of tutorials that can be referred to understand it better. WordPress development services have also provided the best and most demanded plugins to help run e-commerce websites efficiently.

Following the guidelines stated in this article will help you set up a good auctioning website and start making your sales as soon as possible. Try as much as possible to familiarize yourself with the bidding settings and make sure you reach your final decision about the pricing and other related settings before pushing your product to the front page or the main shop.

Always update and add more features that will entice your users, give users discounted products at times and create a good interaction with them. Make more profit by opening your website to everyone so they too can auction their items. All this in place, your website is a success.

Being a 360 degree software service company, we are experienced with the most complex web designs. We have a team of dedicated WordPress developers which would guide you from the very first basic step to the last. You may contact us for economic and custom WordPress development services for your business site.