Traditional and online auction house website design – Viscontea, Milan
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Viscontea, Milan
Project overview
We were asked to re-build an online auction website for Viscontea – an historic Milanese auction house. The website integrates with the Viscontea in-house database and can run 3 types of auction:
- Traditional in house auctions.
- “Buy now!” Ebay style auctions.
- Timed auctions where users can make bid on a lot within a certain deadline.
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How to create a successful Online Auction House website
Auction database synching
The biggest challenge of building an Auction website is integration with the existing Auction House databases. Established auction houses will Often the website will be required to synchronize with the online database. If a bid or sale is made online, this must be registered with the local in-house database and vice versa.
The ideal solution is a one click button that automatically loads the lots and photos to the website when the auction is ready to go live.
The organization of an auction website
Due to the complex nature of an auction, you will also need to keep the website tidy and organized with a user panel to save personal details, watch list, lots bid on, lots won etc.
Auction website SEO
An important consideration to make is whether sold lots will remain online after sale. Even for medium sized auction houses, this will mean adding 1000 or more extra, often unique pages a month to the website – a potentially huge gain in website indexing and visitors (find out more about SEO).
Website features
- Multilingual auction website
- 100% customized design
- 3 types of auction – traditional in House auctions with online bidding, timed auctions, “Buy now!” Ebay style auctions.
- SEO optimized to increase website visitors.
- Public auctions and private auctions (Sealed Envelope)
- Proxy Bidding (Automatic Bidding)
- Integration and synchronisation between online database and the the Auction House database.
- Responsive design for easy navigation on PC, tablet and smartphone.
- Simple load to website button allowing auction house to upload 1000+ lots with photographs to the website.
- Customized web form for users to upload photos of their antiques for a quotation..
- Comprehensive auction information section designed for successful website indexing. For more info, see content writing.
Software and technical details
- Website software: Joomla.
- Extensions used: Auction House, customized programs to syncronize databases and load auctions, SH404SEF to improve website optimization.
- Programming languages used: SQL, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JQuery.
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