Pros and cons for Online Auction Sites Characteristics of a Good Online
Auctions Site
o Site must have prominent online privacy policy that guarantees that the site will provide secure link when a customer enter credit card details and don't sell customer information.
o Clear defined policies and procedures must be enacted upon when and if any wrong transaction occurs.
o Rating of consumers facilitate the identification of sellers who don't exist to the end of bargain.
o Fees and commissions must be mentioned on the website. Most of the sites do not charge any fees from bidders but sellers usually have to pay small fees for listing the things and commission on selling any item. So the bidders must compare online auction sites for the fees and commission rates to obtain a concept of the present rates.
o A great online auction marketplace site should have escrow services option such as PayPal. These services make the selling and buying more quick by preventing consumers from becoming intermediary. The customer can directly send the little fees and payment to the escrew service, after receiving funds escrew gives instruction to sellers to ship the goods. When buyer receives the goods in acceptable condition, funds are used in seller via escrew service.
o A good online auction site must have the international payment and shipping option. Commercial sites support international sales.
Benefits of Online Auction Sites
Online auction marketplace sites offer many perks:
o Online auction sites do not stop businesses to continue sales of product through traditional sales method.
o An online auction also reduces the distribution price of an item. It can be stored at one place till it's ready for shipping. It will also reduce the packaging cost of items for distribution to intermediaries such as stores. It will also protect goods from damages and keep them safe.
o Online auction marketplace also helps smaller businesses to sell their seasonal, discontinued or damaged goods often with profits and eliminate the inventory expense to store them.
o Online auction sites open the doorway of international markets for small businesses and help to expand global market. That's extremely difficult to achieve via normal marketing channels.
o Online auction sites also help new business organisations that provide services and it becomes easy to set a market price based on supply and demand.
o These websites also help to find out what clients are willing to pay without doing time-consuming expensive market research.
Disadvantages of
Online AuctionsOnline auctions do not provide buyers with an use of personally viewing and evaluating items before purchasing. This may lead to the potential of fraud.
Another major drawback is it is also not possible for every business to take part in online auction. Companies have to host their very own auction websites and for this purpose they have to hire trained technical staff.