Catalogs are King!
Several auctioneers are taking advantage of the vastly improved and forward thinking catalog tool that was included in the new Ignite Auction Calendar Suite.
Find the Catalog tool linked on your dashboard to the right of your Auction Calendar Administration button.
NEW! A tremendous value built into the Ignite Auction Suite is that Catalogs now have very good SEO value and Google Base feed will be live by the end of this week.
Compare Feature: A new feature we have added to catalogs is the compare feature. If you have several similar items mixed throughout your auction catalog the visitor can click compare on the items of interest and it will display them in a window (Not A “Popup”) side by side with descriptions of each. If it is real estate they can also see a Google map with pins and many additional fields of information similar to MLS.
Examples of Auctioneers Using Catalogs:
Roebuck Auctions: Credit Union Foreclosure Home Auction
Radius Management: 2009 New Home Auction
You can import a CSV spreadsheet or build a catalog manually. The Import Format is located under Profile in your Ignite dashoard. It only needs to be mapped once if all your spreadsheets have the same field names in the same order.
Each item in the catalog can include documents, photos, videos, terms, location etc.
We really encourage auctioneers to use the catalogs for maximum exposure! List your auction event then create a catalog whether you have one or one thousand items in that auction event. Since it is item based when people search for an item your items will come up taking them to your auction and a full catalog.
The windows that come up are not pop-ups and are not subject to any pop-up blockers. They are like a virtual desktop. You can drag them around your screen or resize the window but you are always still on the main page when the window is closed. Catalogs can be bulk imported from a spreadsheet, manually created item by item or a combination of both.
With just a little out of the box thinking on your part you should be able to see where this is going!
Document Handling – iPaperiPaper is a rich document format built for the web. Built with Adobe Flash, iPaper will display documents in the same way regardless of whether you’re using Windows, MacOS, or Linux. Your readers no longer have to download files or extra software to view your documents.
You can convert just about any major document format into iPaper, including Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, OpenOffice documents, and PostScript files. Supported formats include:
- Adobe PDF (.pdf)
- Adobe PostScript (.ps)
- Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx)
- Microsoft Excel (.xls, xlsx)
- OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
- OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
- OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
- All OpenDocument formats
- Plain text (.txt)
- Rich text format (.rtf)
Once you’ve uploaded your documents to the iPaper viewer, they are published to Scribd – the world’s largest library of user-generated documents. Scribd documents are indexed by major search engines and searchable, so you can broaden your audience.
NEW! By popular demand, we added a Print & Download/Save function to the iPaper interface document viewer. The link allows the viewer to Print and/or Save the document in full form. iPaper converts all documents, maps etc. to a very nice flash viewer. (The standard iPaper viewer has many excellent features but lacked a good printing and saving/downloading function, so we added one of our own ; however, you will not see it in auction preview in Ignite admin, only when the auction is published onto a website.)
State Associations Websites
We finished connecting the member directories on the state auction association websites to Ignite yesterday. Now all member profiles, bio info, pics, etc. pull from your Ignite profile, so be sure it is up-to-date. The officers and directors information also pull from Ignite now, so association managers will need to make sure that information is up-to-date in Ignite as well.
LOGINS: We heard you! In case you didn’t receive the email, you can now log into Ignite with your OLD state username and password … if you haven’t already set up your Ignite account that is. If you already have an Ignite account, you’re good-to-go.
User Feedback
[+] We changed the way dates display in the template.
[+] We added drag & drop sorting to the Gallery images so it works just like the 5 thumbnail images.
[+] We added function to put captions on the gallery images.
[+] We reworked the PUBLISH function to resolve most of the issues that users were having.
Webinars
[+] We are starting training for state association directors/admins specific to Ignite functionality and how it benefits you. Sign up Here.
[+] We have been seeing great response to our online Ignite webinars. If you haven’t already “attended” one, Sign up Here.
[+] We recorded the best stuff from the webinars and published it in topic-by-topic video. View it Here.
Need Help?
We have heard from so many of you that you really appreciate the newLive Chat Support feature we built into Ignite. You will find this button located at the top of every page of the Ignite interface. If you need help, we encourage you to jump on Live Chat Support and one of our team members will assist you.
With your permission, we can also do a Live Remote Support session with you using this system, allowing us to view your computer screen and assist you faster.
We are starting training for state association directors/admins specific to Ignite functionality and how it benefits you. 