o Site should have prominent online privacy policy that guarantees that the site will give you secure link whenever a customer enter credit card details and do not sell customer information.
o Very clear defined policies and operations must be enacted upon when and when any wrong transaction occurs.
o Rating of consumers facilitate the identification of sellers who do not exist towards the end of bargain.
o Fees and commissions must be mentioned on the site. The majority of the sites do not charge any fees from bidders but sellers often have to pay small fees for listing the things and commission on selling any item. Therefore the bidders must compare online auction marketplace sites for the fees and commission rates to get a concept of the current rates.
o A great online auction site should have escrow services option for example PayPal. These services result in the selling and buying more quick by preventing buyers and sellers from becoming intermediary. The buyer can directly send the small fees and payment to the escrew service, after receiving funds escrew gives instruction to sellers to ship the goods. When buyer receives the goods in acceptable condition, funds are transferred to seller via escrew service.
o A great online auction marketplace site must have the international payment and shipping option. Commercial sites support international sales.
Advantages of Online Auction Sites
Online auction marketplace sites offer several advantages:
o Online auction marketplace sites don't stop businesses to continue sales of product through traditional sales method.
o An online auction site also cuts down on the distribution price of an item. It can be stored at one place till it is ready for shipping. It will also reduce the packaging cost of items for distribution to intermediaries for example retail stores. It will also protect goods from damages and them safe.
o Online auction also helps small businesses to sell their seasonal, discontinued or damaged goods often with profits and eliminate the inventory expense to store them.
o Online auction marketplace sites open the door of international markets for smaller businesses and assistance to expand global market. That is nearly impossible to achieve via normal marketing channels.
o Online auction sites also help new businesses that offer services and it becomes easy to set an industry price according to supply and demand.
o These websites also assistance to find out what clients are willing to pay without having done time-consuming expensive market research.

Disadvantages of Online Auctions

Online auctions do not provide buyers with an option of personally viewing and evaluating items before purchasing. This may lead to the possibility of fraud.

Another major drawback is it is also difficult for each business to get familiar with online auction marketplace. Companies have to host their own auction websites as well as for this purpose they need to hire trained technical staff.