Live Auction Site - Lightning Auction
Towlot.com was the brainchild of a Kansas City Tow Lot operator. Unclaimed autos are sold at auction regularly. Those auto auctions were attended by a regular few customers who knew to look for them, with promotions done through the auctioneer. Knowing that other tow lots were spending thousands on their own auctions, our customers asked for an auction site that allowed other tow lots to run online auctions, too, for a few hundred dollars per auction. Each auction needed to be available to local people who could go
"kick the tires" and decide on their bids in advance
- but we needed to keep that last-minute excitement of competitive bidding in real time, too.
Problem:
COST: The number one concern in this case was the cost per auction. The auctioneer’s cut of 20% amounted to thousands of dollars per auction.
TIME: The auctions took at least half of a day at the lot, requiring Saturday work and excluding anyone who could not be present at the specified time with cash in hand.
MARKETING: These are impounded autos, worth at least $100 each as scrap. A million-dollar television campaign was never an option. But, could we keep the excitement of bidding high without a live person to push it?
Solution:
COST: The savings realized by replacing a live auctioneer with 100% online auctions will pay for development costs in a matter of weeks.
TIME: The Lightning Auction allows for last-minute bidding wars, but the average sale takes about 1 minute.
MARKETING: Rave reviews by the bidders result in higher prices to the sellers, and a sort of ‘viral marketing’ effect. By Auction #3, participation and gross receipts were surpassing those with a live auctioneer.
Advantage:
EXTRA INCOME: The residual income from other participating tow lots participating provides an added income stream.
“VIRAL” MARKETING: As the auction business grows on a national basis, every local auction benefits by increased exposure.
E-Commerce
Victorian Trading Co. had been online through Catalog City for about 2 years, when they decided to try an independent web site which would offer them custom solutions. Net2Business was the only web site developer in the city they found willing and able to undertake the challenge of building a website to their specifications.
The Problem:
TIME: Each order processed through the pre-packaged web site had to be re-entered by hand on site in order to make it work with an antiquated accounting system.
COST: In addition to the time spent in-house re-entering and correcting errors, the site carried two layers of charges per transaction.
MARKETING: There was no way, inside the structure of this site, to add free programmable features, or to target searchable keywords effectively.
The Solution:
Net2Business® programmed the server to feed directly into the legacy system, eliminating re-entry time and errors.
Net2Business® using the Client's licensed artwork created a free electronic greeting card feature which brings 300+ visitors per day to his online store.
Gain:
1. Cost per order was down
2. Internet Orders increased from an average of 3/day to an average of 350/day
3. The Average Order size increased from $29 to $55
“How often do your computers go down?” we asked.
“Oh, that depends on the week.” she said.
If you are a business owner, manager or marketer, we believe that you deserve computers that work for years without requiring an expensive service call. When something does wear out or overload, you deserve to have a real person answer your call for help - -fast.
If you are in IT, then our staff would like to help you demonstrate to the people who write the budget that there are cost benefits to them when they provide you with fast, quality systems that allow you to do more.
Net2Business® specializes in Business Systems. The Proposal generated for the lady who was measuring her service calls by the week follows: Click Here for Hardware.
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