Auction sites are very popular these days. Not only bussinesses, but commmon people who donot have time to go to the market and find what they want to buy can use them. There are few characteristics that most websites share now a days.

• An auction site must provide a secure link to the customer, when they enter their credit card information.
• An auction site must have a well defined Privacy Policy, means that they donot forward their customer’s information to anyone.

• They must provide a link to their customers for Transaction Cancellation, if something gone wrong.
• Website must display about their fees and commissions. Normally, they donot charge anything from bidders but sellers are charged with fees for putting items to sell and commissions when they sold something.

• Websites usually hire an escrew service i.e. PayPal. Through this service, buyer send payment and commission to the service. When they receive it, the service instructs the seller to ship the items sold. When buyer receives it in acceptable condition, he informs the service and they release the payment to seller.
Advantages
• Auction sites donot harm the conventional selling system of bussinesses for whom online system is not feasible.

• These type of systems save a lot of money for a bussiness. Bussiness owners don’t have to bother about distribution, packaging, storage etc. it will also prevent any harm to be caused to the items to be sold.

• These websites help small bussiness to sell their seasonal or damaged items with reasonable profit.
• Through an online system, small bussinesses can expand their bussiness to international level.
• It will help the bussiness to find out how much people willing to pay for a certain product and reduce the cost of doing an extensive research.

Disadvantages
• These websites prevents people to inspect items they are about to buy before hand.
• If you want an online system of your own, you have to set a complete setup and hire a professional team to manage it.