Screenshot of the Followmybid interactive mobile auction application

Services

Since

2014

A silent auction is an auction of any product or service. Usually, guests write down their bids on a sheet of paper with their contact information for all auctions they participate in. At the end of the auction, the organizers must collect all the sheets, tally the funds raised, identify the winners and contact them to manage their donations and give them their invoices. This process requires a lot of management on the part of the bidders and makes it difficult to hold such an event.

To simplify the management of silent auctions, Nmédia created Followmybid. This mobile application offers a more pleasant experience for administrators and participants and allows them to raise more money for the cause.

Mandate

To create an interactive application and cross-platform website that would allow an event to raise more funds and be more entertaining for administrators and guests than a traditional silent auction. It had to be simple to use and easy to manage.

Solutions

We have developed a reliable, secure, easy-to-manage cross-platform website and mobile application for auction administrators.
Payment of items is done online, and participants can register without going through the administrator.
Items and bids are displayed in real time on mobile and large screens.
The application also allows you to add your logo to display to partners and sponsors.
Then, you can easily communicate with the administrator and the bidder by SMS. Everything is customized to your image and your real needs.

Technologies used

The application takes advantage of several technologies from the Microsoft range: Microsoft .Net 4.5, Visual Studio 2012 and SQL Server 2012.

Specifically, the web presentation layer was based on ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, knockout and Ajax. In addition, integrating technologies such as SignalR allowed the live update of data modified by other users without refreshment. An external library covers the load of messages to be sent for text messages. To ensure the best possible user experience, Nmédia Solutions' expertise in ergonomics and Web application design was leveraged.

The persistence sources are accessed according to a service-oriented architecture (SOA). All this is based on the robustness and versatility of Nmédia's enterprise architecture, Nms.Core.

To serve as many cases as possible as efficiently as possible, the application was published in Azure, Microsoft's cloud system. Azure allows applications and services to be built, deployed and managed across a global network of data centers managed by Microsoft. With this platform, it is possible to determine the number of active servers needed to meet demand. This is an essential point for this application, given the load that can vary depending on the size of the event surrounding a silent auction.

Objectives accomplished: An easy-to-use and exciting platform for auction participants

Followmybid is an easy-to-use application that works on all types of mobile devices. It increases participation in charity events and interest among participants. The platform brings 25% more benefits than a traditional silent auction, among others, with the ability to have user participation statistics.