Domain Name Auction Sites Need to Go Mobile
Friday, December 5th, 2008
Placing a last second bid on a mobile phone is difficult.
I’ve been watching the auction of 529.org on Sedo all week. As you may know, I own a web site related to 529 plans, so 529.org would be a great pickup for me. The auction ended at noon central time yesterday. I had a lunch meeting at the same time, so I decided I’d just login on my phone to place the bid. That didn’t work out so well. (I’m not a fan of leaving high proxy bids ahead of time, as it lets your competitors know that someone serious is in the game.)
Here’s how it turned out:
11:50: Pulled out my Treo and typed Sedo.com into the browser. It’s a huge page, and took a long time to load. Once it loaded I entered my username and password and logged in. That took me to the user dashboard.
11:53: I click on the “buy” link and click on auctions. Once I did that I had to click on “current marketplace auctions” to go to the whole list of auctions.
11:55: I scroll through dozens of auctions to find 529.org. Found it, and now I have 3 minutes to spare. I click the link and wait for the auction page to download. Excellent, now I can enter my bid…
11:57: Still waiting for the page to load. There it is. I entered my bid of $1,800 and hit submit. I looked at the clock and it was 11:58.
11:58: The confirmation page was loading…sweet, I got my bid in! Oh wait, I forgot that you then have to check a box on the confirmation page. Check the box, scroll down, click the confirmation button and…
It’s 12:00 and a few seconds. I lost the auction and someone got the domain for only $1,351. Bummer.
Sedo does have a mobile web site, but it just lists domains available at auction. It doesn’t appear that you can actually bid through the mobile site. TDNAM also has a mobile site. Domain marketplaces should optimize mobile bidding to increase sale prices (and create a lot less heartache.)
Further Reading:
- mobiSiteGalore Creates Mobile Web Sites Fast
- TelChina and China Mobile to Build Mobile Payments System on .Tel
- Acura Chooses .Com for Mobile Web Site
Tags: domain auctions, mobile web, sedo, tdnam
I definitely agree with this. Sedo, Namejet, Snapnames…
I guess the only current solution to this would be proxy/automatic bids. More chances of winning.
Andrew,
Why don’t you wait and see who bought it?
If it’s not an end user, you can offer $1800
for it since that’s what you would have paid
if you won.
You could even direct the owner to this blog post so he/she can see that your $1800 offer
is your limit.
I meant to add that if the buyer is not an
end user he may be very happy with a quick
$449 payday!
@ Patrick – I thought about that, and contemplated if I should say I only wanted to bid $1500
I haven’t seen the final numbers from the auction. It should be interesting to see.
It was also interesting to see the Wall St. Journal mentioned numeric domains today.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122844055171581735.html
“I thought about that, and contemplated if I should say I only wanted to bid $1500″
Of course, you should offer less than $1800.
That would be smart.
If the owner tries to play hardball then
you could use this blog post as evidence
that $1800 is your max.
The domain is currently parked at SEDO.
If it’s parked there by the new buyer you have a chance, I think.
Good luck.