Summit developed Comet's auction site, which attracts about 500,000 visitors per month and has around 500 auctions each week
As the UK’s only retail-focused digital marketing and eCommerce specialists, we understand the importance of technology to the success of your business. We also know that you need an auction facility that integrates seamlessly with your back-office systems and quickly delivers value from your distressed or obsolete stock.
Summit combines marketing analysis and insight with technical know-how. Summit Auction is easy to integrate with your existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, can cope with a multi-channel environment, and has all the functionality your customers expect. We deliver Summit Auction as a managed service, allowing you to regain control of your inventory and focus on trading your stock and recovering tied-up capital.
An auction platform for retail – Summit expertise
Our technology team comprises 30 online retail experts with thousands of man-hours’ experience between them. We’ve used our technical skills and knowledge of the sector to ensure that Summit Auction will:
- Attract new customers - The auction format drives interest and excitement from new customer segments and allows you to drive traffic back into your core business, where you can cross- or up-sell your full price inventory
- Integrate fully and quickly - We’ve built Summit Auction using Magento, an open source eCommerce platform that makes our solution scalable as well as easier and faster to integrate (using our customised BizTalk connector) with your back-office systems
- Be marketing led - Summit Auction fully supports your marketing efforts through SEO-friendly URLs and content-rich pages that can be indexed – increasing your brand’s exposure across search – as well as by integrating with your CRM system(s) and communications programmes
- Give you control - You can manage your inventory more efficiently with Summit Auction, thanks to features such as minimum bid prices, ‘buy it now’ prices, bid increments and auction duration
- Deliver excellent ROI - The cost of our typical Summit Auction platform means that you only need to sell a fraction of your inventory to make a return on your investment
Summit Auction in practice – Comet
Their challenge
Delivery of a feature rich auction site to allow Comet to become a leader in the electrical clearance space. The site had to integrate with JDA for stock management and a third party provider for payment processing. A live product feed was also required to generate real-time PPC campaigns from live auction data.
Our solution
We assembled a dedicated Comet project team consisting of analysts, developers and conversion experts and employed an agile, iterative project methodology to specify, design, build and deploy a site that met Comet’s specified business objectives.
The results
The site was launched just 10 weeks after the project was formally initiated. The site attracts approximately 500,000 visitors per month with roughly 500 auctions taking place every week.
