Currently we have a few "widgets" / settings available that allow administrators to customize the homepage.  An example would be "Show bestsellers on homepage" which allows the admin to specify how many items (best selling products) they want to showcase on the home page.  I am wondering if something for auctions would also be handy.  I think offering the same flexibility with "auction items" would be great.

Without having experimented much with the current auction system and only surface reading the documentation, it seems that auctioned items are basically just regularly displayed items that you don't actually know are auction items until you click "Buy" or whatever.  So filtering based on auction items in categories, or even easily finding auction items is not something currently incorporated.  

I suppose most people who want to auction items, also want to highlight the fact that they have certain items up for auction.  i.e. maybe a timer displaying a countdown of the auction,  a BID action button, maybe the current BID amount, maybe a display of the latest bid from which user (Guest if hidden), perhaps a small icon in the top right of the thumbnail "AUCTION", a little auction hammer, a monkey eating pickeled beats, whatever.  

The goal would be to draw people into the fact that these particular items are up for auction.  

Not sure if you prefer this to be a plugin or something you want to natively offer.  Just thought I'd throw the idea out there.

Hello Bill,

Thanks for suggestion, but tell me, if we have auctions assigned to many different categories, which one should appear on homepage if we have setting "Show auctions on homepage"?

As a workaround you can create a new category, called "Auctions" for example and add to it all of auctions, then show featured products from that category on homepage. Auction products have timer on product box, so below the rating box you will see "Time left: xx.xx.xxxx", so you will easily know which one is auction. In the case of the badge in the top right corner, you can always use the Flag feature and add "Auction" flag to each product. In the case of change the buy button to bid. What if the buy now feature exists? It should have bid or buy now button on product box?

Best,
Patryk

Yeah definitely some valid points.

I wasn't very concerned with showcasing the category of the product up for auction, but now that you mentioned it, you might be onto something, perhaps a dedicated Auction Page instead of a widget - that breaks it down by Category, this way someone could see what all the currently running auctioned products are easily.  

What I had in my head initially was something along the lines of this very rough concept for an "auction block" style to mimic bestsellers.  But maybe I can look at expanding this to a dedicated 'https://mywebsite.com/auctions' page which separates by category if applicable.  

Also, as for the "BID" versus "BUY NOW"; I think ideally it would be best to have both as an option while showcasing an auction product.  The important part would be displaying the current bid amount and the current buy now amount along with the timer.  

I'll take a look at your alternative options in the meantime.