Bid Feedback: Ideas On Getting It And Giving It Options

[Steve Bachmann]

We've heard a number of comments from Marketplace users that they'd like to get or provide feedback on bids.

• For bidders: Was my bid too low? By a little or a lot? Did the seller(s) even get my bid?
• For sellers: How do I "counter" a bid? How can I send a message to a specific bidder about what it would take to get me to accept?

Here's what we think might work.

Sellers giving feedback

For any given bid, the seller should be given the option to send feedback about that bid to the bidder from the following defined list (more than one could be selected):

1. Raise your bid to $___/bottle
2. Increase your bid quantity to ___ bottles.
3. Change your bid to "multiple purchases" and I'll sell ____ bottles.

Note that the last option is relevant to the "open to buy" capability being introduced later this month (closer to end of the month). See this thread on coming enhancements.

This feedback would be available to be sent about any bid for a wine that a seller has marked for sale. It will be sent via a pop-up window from the same place where Active Bids on a wine are displayed. The feedback will be sent directly to the individual bidder (and not other bidders on the same wine).

Note that sellers who wish to "counter" all bidders on a wine should simply change their asking price by going to Edit Selling Details on the wine details page (or set one if none were set before). Asking prices are available to all bidders and with the new Wine Watcher alerts coming soon (see item #4 in prior thread), this information may be pushed to them if it sets a new low asking price.

Bidders getting feedback

In addition to notifying the bidder with the feedback, the seller's comments will be made public (anonymously) by being "attached" to the specific bid (and date-stamped). So other bidders who are reviewing activity in a wine can see feedback from sellers about any specific bid.

The bidder will also be able to go to his/her Active Bids page and access specific seller feedback about any given bid. To address the issue of bid "deliverability", the Active Bids page will be further enhanced to include a measurement of how many sellers qualified to receive the bid and how many of those have been sent the bid. By "qualified" we mean that a given seller meets the bid's specifications (e.g., location, and in the future, whether full quantity needed is owned if the bid is marked "Single purchase -- all or nothing") and that the bid has not been blocked by the seller's specific filtering criteria (e.g., bids below a certain price may just be blocked now). The second measurement of how many of the qualified bids have actually been emailed is a function mostly of bid notification settings by the seller which can be immediate (anywhere from 0-15 minutes), daily, or weekly. Therefore, this number could grow over time (probably mostly within the first 24 hours).

Thoughts?

Let us know what you think as this feature is going to be implemented in the coming weeks and we'd like it to meet your needs.

[Damon L1]

Thoughts?

Let us know what you think as this feature is going to be implemented in the coming weeks and we'd like it to meet your needs.

Just a couple quick thoughts - these are both related to giving bid feedback

- When giving feedback, the "Raise your bid to '___' USD per bottle" field auto-populates with the last value that you entered (even if it was for a different wine). This is confusing.
- If you try to hit the "Cancel" button, it doesn't do anything. If I hit Submit and the confirmation comes through, I hit the "Done" button and nothing happens.

These are both bugs and nuisances. I like the feature as a concept.

[Kristin Vinfolio]

Thank you for reporting these issues. I will work with our Engineering team to reproduce them and implement a fix. Can you let me know which browser(s) you use for accessing Vinfolio?

Also, within the next few weeks we will be adding another feedback option:

Note: ______ is US$____ for this wine. In comparison, your bid price seems too low.

First field would be a drop down of some choices like:
1. U.S. low retail
2. Marketplace average in last 12 months
3. Marketplace last sale
4. Auction average over last 24 months
5. Auction average over last 48 months

Second field would prepopulate with the value based on selection from first field.

[Damon L1]

Kristin:

I am currently using Firefox 3.5, but I think I have experienced the problem with older versions of Firefox. It happens every time I use Bid Feedback.

I like your thought process for the feature below... but I am not really looking for price to be set automatically based on these options. I want to see all of these data points side-by-side, then I want to make my decision on price.

Damon

Thank you for reporting these issues. I will work with our Engineering team to reproduce them and implement a fix. Can you let me know which browser(s) you use for accessing Vinfolio?

Also, within the next few weeks we will be adding another feedback option:

Note: ______ is US$____ for this wine. In comparison, your bid price seems too low.

First field would be a drop down of some choices like:
1. U.S. low retail
2. Marketplace average in last 12 months
3. Marketplace last sale
4. Auction average over last 24 months
5. Auction average over last 48 months

Second field would prepopulate with the value based on selection from first field.

[Kristin Vinfolio]

Thanks, Damon. I was able to reproduce the issues with bid feedback and have submitted an issue to the Engineering team. Should be fixed within the next couple of days.

In addition to the updates to the bid feedback options which I described, we are also updating the Market pricing module that displays on the right side of all VinCellar pages (as well as on Edit selling details pages and in the Sell wine tool) to display each of these data points as well as supporting detail listings.

Low, current US retail
Average Auction (2 or 4 year)
Average Marketplace (12 month)

I think you will find that a significant improvement to the current pricing data. You can find a listing of Marketplace sales on the VinCellar wine detail page now.

We are working on these improvements now and they will be live during the second week of December.