Bilingual charity auctions with eBay-style proxy bidding

The challenge

A Canadian retailer of sports collectibles wanted to raise money through charity auctions on its existing online store. The store was bilingual (English and French) and hosted on a managed platform, and it sold only fixed-price items. The retailer needed auction-only products with no fixed price, auctions that open and close on a schedule, and the kind of automatic bidding that buyers know from eBay. All of this had to work fully in French as well as English.

What we did

• Auction module installation. We supplied our own auction module for OpenCart and installed it on the hosted store, making the adjustments needed for that environment. We also set up the French language variables.
• eBay-style proxy bidding. We built an automatic bidding system. Each bidder enters a maximum bid, and the system bids for them in a minimum step set for each item, up to their limit. The first bidder has priority when two maximum bids are equal, and bidders see clear outbid messages.
• Bid history. We added a bid history display so bidders could follow how an auction was progressing.
• French localisation. We translated the auction messages so French-speaking bidders had the same experience as English-speaking ones.
• Stabilisation and support. Through 2017 we fixed issues with scheduling and the countdown timer, a language-file error that stopped the module from loading, edge cases in automatic bidding and the history display. We provided ongoing support up to the first live auction.

Tech stack

OpenCart, PHP, MySQL, GSP auction module