Auction Templates

In order to produce the best auction template possible, you need to understand as much as possible about your audience of potential buyers. Almost every buyer is different and much of the information they’re looking for depends directly on the item they are trying to purchase. This article will not try to give you one “catch all” understanding of your customers, but rather provide a set of basic rules to keep in mind as you layout your auctions.

As a general rule, a buyer will click into your auction and quickly scan through it for the information they need. For most online consumers there is general checklist that gets subconsciously followed. Their priorities follow a typical pattern that goes something like this:

1. Tell me about the item you’re selling.
2. How do I have to pay or this item and how will I get it?
3. Does this seller have any specific policies I should be aware of?
4. Who is the person selling this item?

Presenting this information to the buyer in the order they’re looking for it provides a concise and coherent item description, eliminates the need for “info hunting,” and subconsciously gives the buyer a sense of comfort knowing that all of they’re needs have already been considered. Let’s take a closer look at each item in this list.

Tell them about the item you’re selling.
This is the section that will change the most from one item you sell to the next. First and foremost, you should preset your potential bidder with at least one picture of the item you’re selling coupled with a product name (or auction title) and a full description of that item. It seems that buyers want to see at least one larger main image of an item and will click on thumbnail images (expecting to see them in greater detail) if their interest is still peaked. Give them this information at the very top of your auction ad.

Present them with payment and shipping details.
If your potential bidder gets to this point in your auction, then they are probably interested in buying. The next thing on a bidder’s mind will most likely be “How do I pay for this item and how will it be delivered to me?” Present your buyer with clear and concise details about which payment methods you will accept, when their payment is due, and what (if any) action will be taken if their payment is late.

Next explain their shipping options. If you intend to add an additional packing or handling charge, it’s best to make those intentions clear up front, in this section. If this is a delicate or fragile item, it may also be a good idea to explain how you intend to package this item and explain the buyer’s options for insurance. This is also a great place to let the buyer know whether or not you are willing to combine shipping on multiple auction wins. If you do combine shipping, give them a link to your other auctions.

Outline your selling policies.
At this point you’ve probably made a sale, but the buyer may want to confirm any last minute details that make your selling practices unique. For instance, you may be the type of seller that does not accept refunds. Or perhaps you only leave feedback for others after they have already left feedback for you. You may be offering your buyer some type of warranty. This list could go on and on… that’s why these are the details that make your business unique. Try to leave no question unanswered.

Tell your bidder about your business.
OK, you’ve got them sold if they’re still reading. Here’s a great way to seal the deal with a personal touch. Tell the buyer about yourself or your business. If you have a logo, this may be a great place to showcase it. This is also a good section to include links to information outside of the auction (e.g. your ME page, your other auctions, your feedback, your company website, etc.). Providing this information further identifies you as a unique seller. Once the transaction is complete, this buyer may come back time and time again for your products. Keep this section as consistent as possible from auction to auction so that your customers will quickly recognize you as someone they trust.

Again, use this structure as a guideline for laying out your auction template. In many cases, it can be a game of trial and error to finding the best organization of your auctions’ content.

In simplest terms, an auction template is a predefined ad layout that an online auction seller uses to showcase any particular item they are selling. Some sellers utilize one layout that they carry across all of the items they have for sale while others employ a wide range of auction templates and use whichever one fits the item they are selling.

In simplest terms, an auction template is a predefined ad layout that an online auction seller uses to showcase any particular item they are selling. Some sellers utilize one layout that they carry across all of the items they have for sale while others employ a wide range of auction templates and use whichever one fits the item they are selling.

An auction template consists of HTML code to support the layout of the auction ad and can be coupled with Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) elements for further customization. It generally holds the graphical layout elements and blocks of information that do not change from one auction to another.

Are auction templates a necessity to sell in an auction format?
No, not really. Sellers can easily type in the details of the item they are selling directly into some sort of “Describe your item here…” type of text box. However, doing so will only produce an auction that consists of plain text and maybe a handful of pictures. Yes, that gets the job done, but the only thing that distinguishes you from the large masses of other sellers doing the same thing is your username.

There are a few main reasons that sellers make the decision to work with an auction template:

• To promote a professional presence to their prospective bidders.
• To reduce the necessity of retyping information that does not change from auction to auction.
• To reduce image hosting costs.

Let’s take a look at each of these in greater detail.

Use an auction template to promote a professional presence.
Let’s face it. A buyer’s first impression of an online auction seller is the description of the item being auctioned. We don’t click into an auction and immediately look at a seller’s feedback. We first look at the item’s pictures and read the details that are of interest to us. If a buyer sees a block of plain text, they immediately wonder if this is a new seller… or maybe someone that’s just quickly trying to rid themselves of a particular item. Plain text does not say “Hello. I am a seasoned seller that is going to deliver a top-quality product in a timely fashion.”

Use an auction template to reduce repetitive typing.
Most sellers have their own set of selling policies that remain constant from auction to auction. Pieces of textual information like accepted forms of payment, refund policies, and preferred shipping methods can generally be typed out once then reused with each new auction launched. If you’re not storing these pieces of information somewhere then you are drastically increasing the amount of time you spend posting each auction. With such hairline profit margins in the online auction industry, time is very precious. Why waste more than you have to?

Use an auction template to reduce image hosting costs.
This benefit may not be readily apparent to the novice seller. Let me first say that the more pictures you have of the item you’re selling, the better. Let’s use selling on eBay as an example. If you are not using an outside image host, each auction could easily cost you $1.00 in picture hosting if you use 6 or more photos to support the sale of your item. By using an image host and inserting those hosted image URLs into your template you can easily reduce that cost to around $0.10. If you’re still confused on this point, the you will want to explore this site to find out more about the benefits of using an image host.

Hopefully you are slightly more educated on just what an auction template is and why many sellers elect to use them. Explore this site further to gain an even better understanding and learn how to win over your customers and keep them coming back for more.

HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language.  It is used to format text for the web.  This article’s intended audience is the typical online auction seller.  Many sellers find themselves wanting to “dress up” their auction listings in an attempt to attract higher bids and maintain a more professional appearance.  If you have reached this article and find that you want to achieve these same results, but don’t want to be bothered with learning HTML, then I would strongly suggest making use of a site like BiggerBids.com.  BiggerBids.com is an eBay auction templates service that can automate everything for you.  In case you haven’t guessed – yes, we do own BiggerBids.

Line breaks
There are many ways to achieve a breaking line using HTML.  The most common one is with the use of a <br> tag.  The <br> tag creates a single line break wherever it is placed.  If you want to start a new line, simply include the <br> tag where you would generally use your ‘enter’ (or ‘return’ for Mac users) key.  If you want to break over 2 lines, simply use <br><br>.  There is no limit to the number of <br> tags you can use at once.

Opening and closing
The<br> tag is one of the few HTML tags that does not require a closing tag.  Most of the other tags I will cover here require both an opening and closing tag.  All of the content you want to format using a particular tag should be placed within those opening and closing tags.  For instance, a <p> tag is used to place a block of text within its own paragraph.  It is used like this:

<p>This text appears in its own paragraph.</p>
<p>This text appears as its own paragraph below the above paragraph.</p>

The above HTML codes translate to:

This text appears in its own paragraph.

This text appears as its own paragraph below the above paragraph.

Some simple formatting
<b>Bold</b> text = Bold text
<u>Underlined</u> text = Underlined text
<i>Italicized</i> text = Italicized text

Nested tags
Because you may want to apply more than one piece of formatting to a particular text block, you can also place tags within one another.  This can be tricky for new users, because you need to make sure that both the opening and closing tags for one are within the opening and closing tags of another.

This is not correct:

This is <b><u>bold and underlined</b></u> text.

This is correct:

This is <b><u>bold and underlined</u></b> text.

Notice how the correct version shows the underline tags placed completely within the bold tags.  This seems simple, but is very important.

Tags with attributes
So far we have seen some simple HTML tags used to format the text they are wrapped around.  The HTML language also offers you the ability to further customize how a particular tag behaves using HTML tag attributes.  Let’s explore the <font> tag to learn more about this.  The <font> tag allows you to do control a number of display variations for the text it is wrapped around.  The three most used attributes are ‘color,’ ‘face’ and ‘size.’

HTML tag attributes are placed within the opening tag.  They follow this format:

<tagname attributename=”attributevalue”>text to format goes here</tagname>

Let’s explore the three font attributes by using this format:

This is <font color=”#FF0000”>red</font> text.
This is also <font color=”red”>red</font> text.

Notice how the color attribute can be used in two different ways.  You can either assign a color by name or by it Hexadecimal value.

We are using an <font face=”Arial”>Arial font</font> to display this text.
We are using a <font face=”Times New Roman”> Times New Roman font</font> to display this text.

By using the face attribute you can control the actual font that is used to render the text on the screen.

This is <font size=”7”>very large</font> text.
This is <font size=”1”>very small</font> text.

The size attribute allows us to control how large the text will appear on screen.  The allowable values here are from one (1) to seven (7), with seven being the largest.

Combining attributes within one tag
Ad finally we can also combine multiple attributes within the same opening tag.  For instance:

This is <font size=”7” color=”red” face=”Arial”>very large, red text that appears in an Arial font</font> on the user’s screen.

Hyper linking
You can also make use of the <a> tag to hyper link to another web page.  There are two main attributes to be aware of here – ‘href’ and ‘target.’  Let’s look at the following example:

<a href=”http://www.ebay.com” target=”_blank”>Click here</a> to visit the eBay home page.

In this example the words ‘Click here’ will become a hyper link.  When clicked, a new browser window will open and it will go to the eBay home page.  It is the href attribute that you use to point to the proper link location.  The target attribute can be completely omitted if you want to direct the user straight to the linked page without opening a new window like this:

<a href=”http://www.ebay.com” >Click here</a> to visit the eBay home page.

Displaying an image
All auction sellers need to place images in their auctions… right?  Well, this can be one of the more tricky things to do with HTML.  Although placing the image is quite simple, it can be a challenge to get it to render in the proper place on your screen.  I suggest taking the following example along with you on your quest to dig deeper into the HTML language.

An image is displayed using the ‘img’ tag coupled with the ‘src’ attribute.  There are also many other attributes that can be used within the img tag, but again, that’s for your own further exploration.  As a side note, the img tag is another that does not require a closing tag.  You simply place it wherever you want your image to render.

<img src=”http://pics.ebaystatic.com/aw/pics/logos/logoEbay_150×70.gif”>

At the time of this writing, the above tag will display the eBay logo.  The value of the src attribute should be the url of the image you want to display.

That wraps up this (very introductory) article on HTML for auction sellers.  To continue reading, may I suggest clicking on one of the related tags below?