Easy bid, speedy bid

by Chris Dawson

This post was written in August 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

eBay are testing a change which all sellers should appreciate. There have often been calls for auction extenders to allow time for buyers to raise their bid if they’re outbid at the last second. Now eBay are going to make that even less an attractive proposition with some changes to how bids are placed.

They are about to start testing one click bids on eBay.com which about 2% of buyers will see.

During the last 15 minutes of an auction, you’ll see a small window with some key information, such as time left in the auction, current high bid, and most importantly, your status. This information will update every 3 seconds during the last 2 minutes of the listing.

What’s more - if you are already a bidder on the listing, you can place a new bid from this window with a single click! If you are involved in a competitive auction, you know that as the clock winds down every second counts. Now there are no extra steps, like review and confirm your bid, to slow you down.

This is great news, no longer will you have to click the refresh button to see if you’re outbid, for the last couple of minutes this will automatically update. The ability to enter a new bid and confirm in a single click should encourage more bidders to up their price and more importantly they’ll have time to do so.

At the same time eBay will be adding a place bid box at the top of the auction page. Buyers will no longer have to click the “Place Bid” button but will be able to enter their bid direct on the view item page.

I’m wondering why they see the need to test these enhancements, anything that encourages easier and faster bidding is good news for sellers and makes buyers spending easier. Everyone wins!

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Author: Chris Dawson
Posted at: Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Filed Under Uncategorized
 

Comments

One Response to “Easy bid, speedy bid”

  1. Easier bidding from auction pages : TameBay on October 16th, 2007 9:03 am

    [...] Back in August eBay began testing a bid box (the ability to type a bid in directly instead of clicking to an additional page) at the top of the auction page, next to the bid button. After six weeks of testing they’ve realised the obvious, that it’s a good thing to make it as easy as possible for buyers to bid! They’ve just announced that in the next few days the bid box at the top of auctions will be rolled out site wide. [...]

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