Turners streaming live auctions
Published June 9th, 2006
A development project five months in the making has seen vehicle seller Turners Auctions revamp its website and kick off a live streaming auction application.
The online streaming feature, dubbed Turners Live, enables Turner’s dealer network and consumers to view and participate in car auctions in real-time from the comfort of their PC.
The company has had a dealer-only online auction for the past six years but according to chief executive officer Graham Roberts the new system supersedes it in terms of performance and functionality.
Turners Live has already been launched to the company’s 1200 dealers and 30 per cent have signed up; the application will be launched to the general public in three weeks. The system is powered by technology from Canadian-based software firm Live Global Bid and was integrated into the new website by Telecom’s IT division Gen-i.
Roberts says response from its dealers has been favourable and it’s expecting good take-up from consumers. “In any auction we’d have a minimum of 15 dealers online. We had an auction recently with 60 cars – 13 of these sold online.”
Gen-i was also responsible for build of the website and its integration with Turners backend ERP and management systems.
The site features several search and vehicle catalogue functions, developed using Microsoft .Net and SQL technologies. The content management framework is based on an open source product called DotNetNuke.
Since going live in January the site has received 3,460,000 hits, 893,000 page views and 35,600 unique visitors.
