Boot The Virus: Custom Auction Website Using Umbraco

The Campaign Concept

The campaign concept for this custom auction website was simple:

• Professional footballers to donate a pair of signed match day boots
• All signed boots to be auctioned online
• All football fans, supporters and communities to make donations for the boots
• All monies raised to go directly to the NHS

Kenny and Joanne had the campaign name, the designed logo/banners (SimPrint) and a hosting partner (EatITDrinkIT). They needed I‑Finity as a development partner to deliver on:

• A scalable solution with a fast route to market
• Well-designed mobile responsive website incorporating the design assets
• Dynamic homepage with an automatic totaliser to show up to date donations
• Custom auction capabilities with robust automated rules and defined logic for a fair bidding process
• Secure and easy to use auction website design and functionality
• Secure sign-up process and log in area for bidders to manage and place bids
• Secure way to process payments for successful bidders
• Easy to use Content Management System for managing website conten

Challenges that were overcome

• Aggressive deadlines achieved with a planned phased delivery without compromising on security and quality to deliver a positive customer experience
• Prioritised initial website landing page to support press releases, secure partnerships, teams and boots
• Plan for a quick and efficient way to collect final donation of monies
• Despite I‑Finity team running at reduced capacity, working remotely due to Covid-19, established I‑Finity processes and infrastructure enabled instant productivity

Fast route to market with Umbraco CMS

• Its flexibility enabled the creation of the optimal online experience
• Flexibility facilitated the fast route to market
• Delivery of a custom content management experience for ease of editing website content
• Umbraco is highly intuitive making it easy to learn with the delivery of single virtual training session

Key website functionality

Effective Website Navigation, Team Areas and Secure Online Sign Up

• Simple and clear navigation to allow website visitors to easily access information and to get involved with logging in and placing bids
• Created individual team pages across all league teams where footballer page displayed the boots available for auction.
• Custom built sign-up form to capture required details to support the auction process.
• Creation of usernames, passwords, resets and forgotten passwords managed securely by Umbraco CMS

Building an Effective Auction Website 

As the campaign was gaining momentum with sign ups and donated boots, I‑Finity were building a fully customised auction feature based on the requirements captured with the customer:

• Log in ability for those that had signed up to start placing bids
• Time bound auctions with a countdown clock to show time left per auction item
• Intuitive display of bids with name of each bidder and the amount for each auction item
• Built logic to only enable bids within increments of £5.00
• Running total of bids per club including the total per footballer like a league table
• Secure design to capture all bid details and protect data 

Secure Online Payment

• Used a well-known and familiar payment system (PayPal) to avoid any potential payment barriers
• Provided bidder details to support ongoing marketing communications

Flash Auction

Once the campaign ended, unfortunately there were non-payers leaving boots available. Umbraco’s flexibility meant it was easy to create a Flash Auction area within the website to support a new auction date to run to early June.