Bid Beacon has seen some major improvements over the past several months, making it even easier to use and beefing up our infrastructure to support our growth.
New Ultimate Risk Free Option
Bid Beacon has always had a build-your-own approach when it came to pricing. This gave our users complete control over what features they wanted to include, and how much they wanted to pay. While flexible, it sometimes resulted in some headaches as the online nature of digital auctions often resulted in more traffic than expected, and additional add-ons would need to be purchased.
To make auction admin’s lives as easy as possible, we’ve introduced the new Ultimate Risk-Free option, which includes all features regardless of auction size. With this option:
- Connecting your bank account to receive payments is super easy
- Users are required to enter their credit card information before placing bids, so you’re not left hanging with unpaid items
- The platform adds a percentage fee at checkout time, which can be recouped by adding a surcharge (ultimately passing some, or all fees onto your guests)
High Availability Performance Upgrades
Auctions can get pretty crazy towards the end as bidders scramble to win their most cherished items, and we’ve upped our game to ensure that Bid Beacon handles these hectic moments like a champ!
Key improvements in this area are the addition of redundant databases, essentially providing real-time back-up of all data, and architectural changes that prepare us for load balanced deployment. We will continue to monitor usage and scale our servers up as needed to ensure all auctions run smoothly.
Usability Improvements
The biggest improvement has been the ability to promote your auction and let guests view the auction without needing to first register an account. This makes it much easier to share the auction on social media or using mailing lists, generating more interest and ultimately, a more successful auction.
The guest experience has also been given a fresh new look and feel.
Full Admin Dashboard
Bid Beacon started out as a single app with slightly different views for admins. As features were added, this became somewhat unwieldy and so we rebuilt the admin experience, giving them a full-fledged dashboard to set up and manage their auctions. To see how it all works and to access our demo auction, visit Bid Beacon.