Real-time Auction Portal App Development

Verticals

Consultancy

Client’s requirements

The client wanted the website to act as an online auction portal. He wanted this portal to be a source where people can sell their business products, clear their excess stock, ship purchased inventory, and other auction-related activities.

He wanted this to be an environment where buyers can bid online through their mobiles, tablets, or desktops. He tried to set a system where the auction automatically goes to the highest bidder.

Our client wanted the platform to be optimized for performance where there could be a track of all the bidding related activities.

The challenges

With unique demands, come unique challenges. Here are some of the difficulties which we had to face while the process was on:

Efficient architecture

The architecture had to be in such a way that it can handle thousands of auctions in a single screen and that too without slowing the speed of the site.

Real-time auction portal

Auctions are the actions of seconds. You are one second late, and the deal is gone. Hence, we needed to prepare a system that is highly responsive and acts in real-time.

Integrated Emails and mobile texts

The client wanted us to develop an active notification system as well, which can send the information of the seller, bidder, and the winner through the mail and the mobile texts.

Separate back-end of the seller and host

The host and the seller needed to monitor the bids. Also, they had to know when to close the proposals. Hence they were required to have some separate interface for all the monitoring.

Handle online and offline payments

Some people wish to make online payments and some offline. Hence we needed to develop a system where both could be integrated into the payment procedure, and real-time updation could be done.

Solutions

To meet the customer requirements of enabling the real-time bidding and monitoring, we made it all happen with the help of a matrix-based auction model. The system was architected in a unique way so that it can handle different kinds of auctions for different products at different places at the same time. The types of auctions, it includes are simple matrix, advanced matrix, English reverse, and Japanese auctions.

User roles

Before getting down to making the auction portal, our team first developed the roles of all the users so that they have the monitored power.

Hosts: These were the procurement managers, determining the auction rules and settings, specifying the products for trade, and inviting the participants. They can also monitor the incoming bids and bidders’ details, and they can select the winner with the help of a special pop-up message.
Co-hosts: They help hosts to communicate with the participants via online chats, but they have limited access to the auction system.
Bidders are typically product vendors who participate in the bids at the bid placing points to set the highest bid and buy the product.
Observers monitor the auctions and communicate with others through online chats. They do not have access to the auction setting, and they cant set the bid themselves.
Administrators manage the portal on the sid of the customers and have full access to the system.

Auction setup

We have built a range of parameters to the portal so that auctions could be set quickly, and multiple participants could be invited at the same time. Some of the key features embedded are

Setting up general parameters: Title, currency, format, type, publication time
Designing auction matrices: Categories and grouping, specifying the product, inputting custom total price calculation formulas, opening bids for each group.
Uploading relevant information
Auction participants selection
Invitation sending
Monitoring invitation acceptance

End-to-end auction management

Accepting bids
Displaying details of lots
Communicating with auction participants and host
Bidding history review
Real-time price changes
Auction winner determination

Architecture

For the release, host, and scaling, Symfony Framework was adapted. The unique design was possible only with the help of PHP, AJAX, and MySQL, which also ensured scalability, performance, and security.

Flexible architecture ensured the extensibility of the components or features. Database communication was initiated by the database-specific layers, which also helped in retrieving complex data from multiple tables.

All the images and the graphics were called from their servers so that the UI stays free from any of the business logic.