Before - archived screenshot of original lot page images not retained (L)
Fellows Auctioneers have been selling since 1876 and were Star Digital's biggest client. A lot of what we learned about auction design, and later built the whole of Auction Marketer around, started with them and their website.
The problem with the lot page was it was long and had varying degrees of information making it that way and at the bottom would be the price and the bid button. Sat at the very bottom of all of it. When a lot had extensive photography and detailed condition reports, you were scrolling forever to place a bid yet if the next lot had almost nothing, the whole page would spring up and the button location would shift. There was no consistency for someone trying to bid quickly or work through a sale with hundreds of lots.
The 'fold' was something we were thinking about a lot at the time, taking time in understanding what a bidder could see without scrolling and making sure the most important things lived there. Things like the bid button, the current price, the key details. Everything that mattered had to stay put regardless of how much or how little information showed. Details and condition reports lived within their own tabbed frame which the user could scroll within - but never effected the outside.
We also wanted to make use of Fellows' extensive use of photography for their lots. They invested heavily in documenting every lot properly, and was perhaps the most important piece of any lot listed, so the design had to lead with that.
Fellows was where we were able to experiment. With 2-3 sales a week we could see quickly what worked and what didn't. This single-page-style design did. The structure we landed on of being photography dominant, key bidding information anchored and detailed content accessible but out of the way influenced how we continued to design for auction sites long after.
Role: Lead Digital Designer at Star Digital
Skills: UI Design, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Client Collaboration, QA & UAT
Skills: UI Design, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Client Collaboration, QA & UAT
