Auction options explained

How does automatic bidding work?

In YITH > Auctions > General > “Auction options” you can find the options to set ‘Automatic bidding’.  

Let’s say that you wish to spend a maximum of 300€ on a car, you go to that product detail page and see that there is an ‘bid up’ of 10€.

You insert the amount of 300€ and you let the system basically do the rest.

As you can see your initial bid has been added to the ‘bids’ list. But wait, this is not the 300€ you inserted?! That is right, this is the way the automatic bid up works. Each time another user bids, you will automatically bid ’10€’ until you reach your max of 300€.

How to set up an auction with Automatic bidding?

Step 1: Set bid type to > Automatic

Step 2: Choose the automatic bid type:

• Simple: set one fixed amount.

Example: 10€ increment regardless of the current bidding amount.

• Advanced: set different amounts based on price ranges.

Example: It starts off with an amount of 5€ and depending on the current bid amount, the automatic bid increments will change, to 10€ in the second price range. And if the current bid amount exceeds 251€ it finally changes to 25€.

Ban users from bidding and add a personal message to the reason why they are banned. You can ban a user from Users > Edit user > Auction details.

The user will no longer be able to place bids on any auction product, no exceptions possible. They will see your message on the product page.

You can offer your users the possibility to choose the buy it now option for an “Auction” type product. So they can purchase the product for a fixed price bypassing the current auction.

You can set the fixed price of the related product in product editing page.

Users will see an extra button on the product page, from where they can purchase the product directly.

What happens if the bidding price exceeds the buy now price? Good question. In YITH > Auctions > General > Auction options> ‘‘Bidding options’‘, you will find 2 options with regards to what to do in this situation.

• Hide ‘buy now’ when a bid exceeds the buy now price: Buy now option will disappear if the price has been exceeded.
• Hide ‘buy now’ after the first bid: Buy now option will disappear if a bid is placed, regardless of the amount.

In WooCommerce > Settings > Emails you will find all emails added by the plugin in which you can activate/deactivate and also access to modify the content.

User emails

• Highest bid outbid: informs customers that their highest bid has been overbidden.
• Is about to end: email sent to the user when the auction is about to expire. For the correct email sending, enable the “Send emails” options from General> Auction options> Cron settings & user notifications:

• Winner: informs the customer who won the auction.
• Successfully bid: customers receive an email after they successfully placed a bid.
• No winner: customers who did not win will receive an email.
• Delete bid: customers will be informed when their bid has been deleted.
• Winner reminder: ​email to remind the user who won the auction to pay for the product. You can set this email in YITH > Auctions > General > “Auction rescheduling”.

• Reserve price not exceeded for best bidder: informs the best bidder that the minimum reserve price hasn’t been reached.
• Successfully follow: Customer is added to the followers list correctly.
• New bid for bidders and followers: Bidders and followers are informed about a new bid.
• Closed by buy now for bidders and followers: Bidders and followers are informed when an auction is closed due to ‘Buy now’.
• Stripe emails – Only visible if you have enabled YITH Stripe:
  • Stripe couldn’t process your payment: Email after first failed attempt.
  • Stripe payment failed: Email after second failed attempt.
  • Stripe item lost: Email after third failed attempt.

Administrator emails

• Reserve price not exceeded: admin receives a notification in case an auction has ended without reaching the reserve price.
• Without bids: admin receives a notification in case an auction ends without bids.
• Has a winner: admin receives a notification when the auction ends and has a winner
• Successfully bid email for auctions: admin receives an email when a customer successfully places a bid.
• Delete bid admin: will be sent when a bid has been removed.
• Rescheduled product admin: ​when the auction product will be rescheduled automatically.

Email example

Does your product require a payment, before the user is able to place a bid? That is possible, you can enable this option in YITH > Auctions > General > “Auction options”.

You can set this rule in the ‘general‘ plugin settings, and decide per product if you want to disable it and/or change the default fee amount.

You first decide IF you want to override the general settings, and you then decide how you wish to override them.

The user will see a warning message on the product page, explaining the need of a fee.

The plugin will automatically add an ‘Auctions’ endpoint to the my account page. This tab will include both the watchlist and the current auctions the customer is bidding on.

Here the user is able to see his bid, the current bid, if the auction is active, if you won, and the pay now button (in case he won).

When you’ve enabled the option “Automatically create a “Pending payment” order assigned to winner” the winner of the auction will be able to find the created order directly in the ‘Orders’ section (check the settings here).

The customer is able to directly pay for the auction that he won, because the order is already created with a pending payment status.

The plugin offers the possibility to postpone the auctions expiration date, when someone places a new bid a few minutes before it ends.

You need to enable “Overtime” settings which you can find in General > Auction options> Bidding options.

You can also override this option on product level, within the product edit page. For example if you wish to turn off the overtime option for a certain product, or set a different time span.

• Override overtime options: If you select YES here, and leave the ‘Set overtime’ option to NO, no overtime will be applied to this product.
• Set overtime: Like the general settings,  you can set the time that will specifically be applied to this product.

How do I configure overtime?

Suppose we set our parameters as follows:

• Time to add overtime: 5
• Overtime: 15

If someone adds a bid 5 minutes before the auction ends, extend the auction for 15 minutes more.

The auction expires at 06:45:00.

The user places a bid at 06:46:00 (4 minutes before the expiration)

The auction now expires at 07:00:00 (‘old’ time + 15 minutes)

Before overtime:

After overtime:

The reserve price is a minimum amount you give in, in order for the product to be sold. If no bid is higher than the ‘reserve price‘ the auction will close, without a winner.

The reserve price is optional, you can set it directly from the product editing page.

If the reserve price is not met nor exceeded at the auction expiration, there is no auction winner. You can decide to ‘reschedule’ the auction, which basically means that you extent the auction time but all previous bids are removed (you start again from zero). You can find this option in YITH > Auctions > General > “Auctions rescheduling”.

Example: If the auction is planned to expire 1 August, and up to that date the placed bids didn’t exceed the reserve price. The new expiration date will be set to 21 August (20 days).

In the end, the admin will receive an email about the automatic rescheduling and/or about not reaching the reserve price.

In order to see all options the ‘Watchlist’ includes, let’s start by activating the option first. You can enable this option in YITH > Auctions > General > Auction options> ”Bidding options”.

By enabling this option, users can add products to their watchlist, like a list of their favorite auction products, or products they are interested in.

The user can check the complete watchlist from their my account page under ‘Auctions’. Here they will also find the auctions they bid on.

To show the watchlist on the frontend you will have to insert the watchlist as a widget, you can check this page to see how to enable widgets.

Empty watchlist

Filled watchlist