Auctions Revamp

We’ve taken some time to show Auctions some much-needed love so, without further ado, let’s jump right into some new features that we’re super-excited about.

 

Buy It Now

That’s right, you can now enable Buy It Now for your Auctions. For sellers, this will be an incredible advantage for you to get your listing sold as fast as possible. If somebody really wants what you’re selling, you won’t have to wait for the Auction to end at it’s scheduled time. For buyers, if getting into bidding wars with other users is not your cup of tea, this is the perfect opportunity for you to get the gear you want without any headaches.

However, buyers must act fast to take advantage of Buy It Now. As soon as an Auction receives it’s first bid, the bidding war is on and the option for Buy It Now is no longer valid.

 

Countdown Timer

The final stages of an Auction for buyers can be frustrating, especially when you’re in a heated bidding war with one or several other buyers. As part of our efforts to alleviate this problem and make bidding more fun, we’ve add a countdown timer so that you don’t have to continually refresh the page to see how much time is left. The countdown timer will begin within the last 12 hours of the Auction.

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Bidding History

Another feature that we’ve added is a bidding history. This will allow for a buyer to simply click on the number of bids for the Auction and get a detailed view of all the bidding activity for an Auction. You can now stay in the know of how many people you’re doing battle against in your bidding war. And don’t worry – usernames other than your own will be anonymized. By default, proxy bids will not be shown. Feel free to click ‘Show Proxy Bids’ to reveal them and see the full bidding activity.

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Auto-Refresh

Last, but certainly not least, when the Auction is in it’s last hour, we’ll automatically update the bid count and current price for you. Give your refresh button a break! We’ll keep you up-to-date right up until the point that the Auction ends so that you don’t have to refresh the page constantly to keep up with the bidding activity. As an added bonus, if you’re currently the bidding leader, if at any point in that last hour you are outbid, we’ll refresh the page for you so that you can see you’ve been outbid – making sure you waste no time in getting back to the top.

 

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We hope buyers and sellers alike will love these new features for Auctions.

Happy Bidding!

Big News for Listing Upgrades

For the last several months, we’ve been working really hard on some big changes in the ways you’re able to add value to your listing through Listing Upgrades. We’re super excited about them and we’ve got a lot to share, so let’s dive right in.

 

Price Reduction for Bold

We understand that it can be a bit of a leap to pay $5.00 to Bold your listing if you’re opting for a $4.00 Basic listing. We’re going to fix that by cutting the price of Bold in half. That’s right, you can now Bold your listing for only $2.50!

 

Thumbnails

It’s true, a picture is worth a thousand words. You can now purchase a Thumbnail to show up next to your listing in the Marketplace for only $5.00!

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Higher Value-Add for Featured

As a way to really jumpstart our users listings, we’ve traditionally given them Bold for FREE when they upgrade to Featured – a cost savings of $5.00. You may be thinking that since the cost of Bold has decreased, the value-add for Featured has also decreased but we’ve got some great news for you.

To make sure our users are still getting the best value possible for their listings, not only do you still get Bold for FREE when you upgrade to Featured but we’re also going to give you a Thumbnail! The price of Featured will remain unchanged at $20.00 but with the FREE addition of Bold and a Thumbnail, your cost savings is now $7.50!

 

Audiogon Boosts

This is the big one. You’ve been asking for more ways to gain exposure for your listings and we were listening. We’d like to introduce you to Audiogon Boosts.

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What are Boosts?

Boosts provide you with the ability to buy impressions (more on that later) for your listing. Simply select “YES! Boost my listing.” when you’re creating a listing and we’ll take care of the rest. We’ve implemented intelligent selection algorithms to make sure that users are seeing the right listing at the right time. If a user is searching specifically for “turntables”, we’ll give priority to Boosted listings that are turntable listings. By factoring in relevance, we ensure that you’re getting the greatest bang for your buck!

What counts as an impression?

Each time a user loads a page in our Marketplace, we will show them several Boosted listings. Every time one of your Boosted listings is displayed on the page, that’ll count as one impression.

When do my Boosts expire?

That’s the best part – THEY DON’T! When you purchase Boost impressions, you own them forever and you can use them on as many listings as you’d like. Consider this example:

  1. You purchase 10,000 Boost impressions.
  2. You opt to Boost two of your listings.
  3. Each of those listings receive 2,500 impressions before they sell.
  4. You now have 5,000 Boost impressions left to use on other listings.
  5. SIMPLE AS THAT!

So don’t be afraid to load up on Boosts!

New Feature! – Block “Low Ball” Offers

Sellers can now block “Low Ball” offers!

By enabling this feature, all offers received below 55% of the asking price will automatically be rejected.

How do you set it up?  It’s EASY.

Step 1:  Go to ‘Edit Account’.

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Step 2: Scroll to the bottom, click the check box and then click ‘Update Account’.

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If you have any questions regarding this feature or need additional assistance please contact us here .

A Better Browsing Experience

As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, we’ve made some changes to the homepage and the navigation menu bar at the top of every page. We want to continue providing our users with the best possible experience for browsing, buying, and selling high-end audio equipment and music – and these changes are a big push in that direction.

Here’s a summary of what’s coming your way:

1. Improved Homepage Content

The homepage should be an enjoyable place to visit – somewhere you can expect new and exciting content. We’re aiming to make it just that.

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2. Improved Navbar Design

In order to make the navigation menu bar more useful and suited for growth, we rebuilt the dropdown menus from the ground up. Each navbar dropdown now has plenty of content, in an easy-to-use (and easy-to-read) presentation.

Discover is where you’ll find curated listing categories and other content that we think you’ll love.

Explore is where you’ll come to see all the different facets of Audiogon – Forums, Virtual Systems, Bluebook, etc.

Learn is where you’ll, well…LEARN. We’ve built several pages for the purposes of educating our users on what all we have to offer and how to best leverage our resources. By keeping you in the know, we can ensure you have the best buying and selling experience possible.

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3. Consolidated User Links

Instead of finding links in different places that are your links, you can now find any user-related links under your user dropdown.

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4. New Today

We know that you love New Today, so we want to give it the attention it deserves. You can now find New Today prominently displayed on the homepage. But don’t worry, it’s still available in the navbar as well, so that you can access it easily from anywhere on the site.

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What’s New with Audiogon Virtual Systems

We’ve completely rebuilt Audiogon Virtual Systems into a standalone application and added tons of new features. Here’s a quick overview.

We preserved all data

We’ve already migrated all Virtual Systems to the new app. Users with existing systems don’t need to do anything.

Categories are now Tags

vs_4We kept the Categories you’re used to, but now you can also add your own. Tags are a great way to add searchable keywords to your system.

New system builder

vs_5We’ve made it easier than ever to add components, images and descriptions to your Virtual System.

Favorites

vs_6Have a favorite system that you’d like to keep track of? Add it to your Favorites and we’ll let you know when it’s updated.

Notifications

vs_1We’ll let you know if someone comments on your system or adds it to their Favorites.

What’s New with Audiogon Forums

Audiogon’s Forums are being modernized. Here’s a quick look at some of what’s changing and what’s staying the same.

We preserved all data

We’ve already migrated all your old posts and replies. You won’t lose anything.

Updated, but familiar user interface

We’ve designed the new Forums to feel familiar while incorporating modern design and user interface practices. The result is something you’re used to that looks and works better.

You can now “mention” users by name

mentioningPrepending an “@” sign to a member’s username will alert them that they’ve been mentioned. Other users will be able to click their name to view their profile.

Advanced search

searchingIn addition to the search methods you’re used to, you can now search within Titles only or filter your results by username.

Notifications

notificationsWe’ll notify you when threads that you have created or participated in receive new activity or when someone mentions your username in a post.

Rich-Text Editor

text-editorNo more proprietary markup tags for formatting your text. Our new editor makes basic text editing easy.