Commodities Live Auction Platform

British Wool(formerly British Wool Marketing Board) is owned by approximately 35,000 sheep farmers in the UK. They collect, grade, market, and sell British wool on behalf of their producers to the international wool textile industry for use in flooring, furnishings, and apparel.

A unique approach to auction data

British Wool approached Auction Marketer to help them replace an ageing platform for their wool fleece auctions. Auction Marketer underwent a lengthy discovery process with the client to fully understand their requirements. 

Our analysis and research revealed that the data required to be used in their platform is very complex. In addition, the auction process is very different to traditional auctions seen elsewhere. In turn, this posed a unique set of challenges for our team, such as streamlining the system's complexity and creating user-friendly interfaces. 

Creating user-friendly auction interfaces

We collaborated with our UX/UI design team to create a series of user-friendly layouts for:

• the auction back-office 
• the auction upload and proofing process, 
• the auction bidding screens, 
• the user back office,
• the post-auction offer screens.

The platform went through multiple testing iterations to ensure that every process worked in a user-friendly manner.

 The majority of calculations for average pricing take place in real-time on the platform and must be right. In addition, each lot has a 3-second countdown before ending to allow for last-second competing bids.

This commodity auction platform is the most complex technical project the Auction Marketer team have worked on, providing insight into an auction methodology that is both interesting and exciting. Moving forward, we're using this to continue to build and innovate within the commodity vertical.