Tips & Best Practices: Registering In-Person vs Remote Bidders

Review the following options to see whether it makes sense to sell tickets or direct your supporters to the signup page in order to give them access to online mobile bidding at your event.

  1. If you are having a live auction and/or paddle raise using bid paddles, in-person guests must purchase or be issued a ticket. Tickets are the mechanism for assigning each guest a bidder number. A ticket may cost $0.
  2. If you want to charge admission for in-person (or all) guests, you must sell tickets.
  3. If you're already selling tickets for in-person guests, it's usually easier to add a $0 Online Bidding Only ticket for remote supporters. This allows you to direct everyone, regardless of how they plan to participate, to the same place to register for your event. And all registered guests can be found, managed, and invited to bid from the Tickets page or the Send Invites screen (filtered to Ticketed Guests).

If your event is FREE and ALL bidding is taking place via smartphones, tickets are not necessary.  These are easier ways to provide access to bid (use any combination):

  1. For in-person events, post a generic QR code to the SIGNUP page at your event.  Your supporters scan the code and are asked for their email address.  If their email is already associated with a user record, they are asked to retrieve an authentication email for a link to begin bidding.   If their email is not recognized, they are directed to the signup form to register, then to the catalog to bid.
  2. For online events, direct supporters to the CATALOG via a link or QR code.   Anyone can browse the catalog, but users must be signed in to place bids.    For users that are not signed in, the "Place Bid" field is replaced with a link to "Sign in or Sign up to place a bid" - which directs them to the signup page and asks for their email address.  If their email is already associated with a user record, they are asked to retrieve an authentication email for a link to begin bidding.   If their email is not recognized, they are directed to the signup form to register, then back to the item they wanted to bid on.
  3. Ask suporters to pre-register by directing them to the Signup form (a more streamlined registration process).
  4. Send invitations to bid to Users you have migrated from a past event, imported from a spreadsheet, and/or those who pre-registered on the Signup page.