Ok, as the dust settles on my first chaotic WHC auction, I found the actual auction and bidding process to be pretty good - up until the end of the auction.
Here is my review ([notify]FM[/notify]):
Pre-Auction:
The main problem here was me not seeing the option to paste a list as it was at the bottom right corner. I feel that should be placed at the top, not bottom. Now that I know where it is, maybe not deal breaker though. I still feel like something about that process is a bit clunky, but with more use I'll be able to better identify what that means. The big issue is the credit card auth stuff. Of course I don't know how many times you have to deal with non-payment from a regular TBR participant. If that was a serious issue, then I could understand, but I assume that if you just prevented people from participating in the next auction until they've made their payments for the previous auction - well that would solve 99.9% of those issues too.
Auction:
I thought this part works pretty well and updating bids etc was pretty smooth. Good job here. My main comment about the actual bidding is that power users might like to have the list automatically sorted by time remaining (so the ones about to close are at the top), or at least have the ability to manually click a sort button to do that. When you've got dozens of auctions all closing within minutes, it is a challenge to keep track of which ones are ending. You don't want to hamper people's impulsive last second bids, you'd just be losing money. It only takes two people to run an auction up significantly higher than the 3rd highest bidder. Accidentally lose one of those two bidders and you're leaving serious money on the table. This is an issue for most sites, but for me, I think the ability to manually sort by time remaining would certainly help keep focused on the domains that are closing first.
Another interesting option might be a "tap out" button when the price is more than you're willing to pay so you just want it off your list to provide added clarity to the remaining auctions you ARE interested in. The "tap out" button could even just sort it to the bottom of the list with the option to "tap in" again if they change their mind. This is obviously only useful when there are many domains in an auction. But I know on busy days I've certainly wished for this option many times on every TBR platform but never brought it up anywhere.
Post-Auction:
As my winning auctions ended - they just disappeared from the list. Sibername kept them in the list, just showed closed. While that wasn't quite optimal either, it was comforting to see the results right there, and I could keep tabs on how much I've already spent. What would have been better was if Sibername pushed the closed auction data to a separate table below the active auction table. That allows the bidder to focus on the bids, but keep an eye on funds already spent and the comfort factor of seeing the closed auctions.
The current situation at WHC - with closed auctions just disappearing and nowhere to be found leaves a very disturbing feeling of "Wait, what just happened? did I win that? No? how much did I spend?" Not seeing makes you second guess what just happened especially when there are many auctions.
The current table at the bottom is pretty much useless to me. I don't care to see the domains WHC didn't get listed there. It's irrelevant at this point, we're bidding on domains you did win. It would be totally fine to still have a page showing that data, just not here in the active auction page. Its just clutter that doesn't really add value, at least not for me.
What I would suggest is a new table showing all the closed auction results for the day. So once an auction is closed, it would jump from the top active auction table to the lower closed auction table. This way users can keep tabs on what they've already spent, and have the peace of mind on seeing that visual confirmation of the day's results. I would label that table "Closed auctions - Unofficial Results. All bidding activities are subject to audit." Once results are audited and official, that table title could change to Official Results.
Results & Billing:
I just got the email with the official results. I was happy to see the domains I thought I won listed! The whole "claim your domains" page was at first a bit weird terminology. I'm thinking, what, do I have the option to not pay for a domain?? But now that I do it, I see this is simply your opportunity to assign a registrant to each domain individually, or as a group. Well done here, that worked perfectly.
Unless I missed it, this could have also been an opportunity to allow users to assign nameservers in the same manner at the same time from the same window. While the bulk update feature works well enough for nameservers, it would be slicker to kill two birds with one stone - especially if its using your default nameserver choices.
As for payment, since we pre-authorized everything during pre-auction, that was automatic, so no hassle there other than you had no opportunity to send E-transfers. From my perspective, authorizing long term customers for every order is a huge annoyance. I know we've probably beat that horse to death. But I'd rather make a single CC or E-Transfer on known results than being hassled to repeatedly authorize on not much more than hopes and dreams in the pre-auction. I hope WHC fixes this - at least for trusted and verified users.
Over all, this went better than expected, mostly because the actual bidding process went smooth and easy, other than trying to juggle closing times on dozens of simultaneous auctions. I guarantee some money was left on the table due to that issue. This seemed to be a more extroardinary week though in terms of interesting domains. Slow weeks may not be much of an issue.
Sibername's interface wasn't perfect either, and change is always hard for stubborn old people like myself, but good job [notify]FM[/notify] and WHC to get your new interface to where it is.
Cheers.
