About Smart Categories

Let’s Learn 

• What is a Smart Category? 
• What Smart Categories Can I Enable or Disable? 

What is a Smart Category? 

Smart Categories are supplemental categories that can be added to your auction to highlight items. In addition to appearing in regular auction categories, items can also exist in Smart Categories. 

Smart Categories are sections of your auction site that are automatically populated by our system. The program rounds up and displays items in these categories based on the information that you provide, eliminating extra work on the part of your administrators. Items are added and removed daily. If there are no items that meet the criteria for a Smart Category, that category will cease to exist and simply not appear within your auction pages. The system is designed to ensure that your bidders never encounter an empty category. 

You can enable or disable these categories under Event > Web Site > Smart Categories. 

What Smart Categories Can I Enable or Disable? 

 Here's a list of the different Smart Categories: 

• Closing Soon: Items that will close out their bidding or buy-now status within 24 hours will be applied to this category. Please Note: The Closing Soon category does not appear in the final 24-hour period before your auction is due to close - when all the remaining items will be closing soon. 
• Featured Items: When you are creating or editing item information on the form page, you can designate whether you would like an item to appear in the Featured Items category. Please Note: Items that have already closed, or have already passed the live event date in which they were auctioned, will be eliminated from this category. 
• New Items: Once an item is published to your auction it will appear in the New Items category for the first 3 days. Items that are closed or have been purchased through the "buy now" feature will not appear in this category. 
• Hot Items: This category is populated with the top 15 items that have been bid upon with at least 5 unique bidders. The item with the highest bid in your auction will also be included in this category even if it has fewer than 5 bidders active. Only those items that are currently open or available for "buy now" are eligible to appear in this smart category. 
• Great Deals: This category contains the top 15 items with the greatest ratio between the opening or leading bid and the item’s assigned value. "Great Deals" must be open for bidding or as a "buy now" item, and have at least an opening or leading bid, reserve, or buy now price that is less than 1/2 of the item value. 
• Live Event Only: This category lets your bidders preview items that will appear in an upcoming Live Auction and are not available for online bidding or buy now purchase. This smart category only exists if a Live Auction will be running in conjunction with an online auction. 
• Online Only: This category presents all the items that you are offering exclusively online. These items give your live event attendees another good reason to participate online, and folks unable to attend your event will appreciate having the chance to support your cause without losing out to in-room bids at the event (as they might with your Live Event items). Please Note: Items that have already closed will not continue to be included in this category, so bidders are focused on available items. 
• No Bids: This category presents all the items that you are offering that do not currently have any bids. This will give additional exposure to items that have not yet generated much interest. This category excludes any Buy Now Only and Live Event Only items. 
• Bidding Extended: This category presents all the items that you are offering that, due to Bid Extension, have been extended beyond their original online close. This will make it easier at the end of the auction to single out items that are still available and open for bidding. Only items that are currently open for bidding will be viewable in this category. 

 Note: Don't forget to click on Update Smart Categories to save any changes made. 

Helpful Information! 

Mobile bidders can filter auction items by category. Once a category is chosen, the auction items associated with that category will be displayed with a corresponding image. 

Please note that when using a mobile device bidders can only filter by one category at a time.