Automating and eliminating repetitive tasks can increase efficiency and enhance profitability. As eBay and other auction sites add more and more optional listing features, manual listing of auctions becomes increasingly time consuming. Put simply, a good auction management system is quickly becoming a necessity for all but the occasional seller. Instead, all of the work is done on the web, at the site of the service provider. As a result, all of the seller's listing and auction tracking information is stored by the service provider, and little or no information is stored locally on the seller's computer.
Some systems are more full-featured than others.
However, since most sellers will never use all of the features offered by these systems, the most full-featured offering is not necessarily the best choice for a seller. For this report, we evaluated six web-based auction management systems. Our product testers evaluated each service with a hands-on trial, listing auctions, testing customer service response, and evaluating commonly used features for ease of use. Our testers were located in the United States and Canada. For that reason, we will be taking another look at these services during the summer of 2001.