Sotheby’s introduces new online salesroom and bidding platform features

Auction house Sotheby’s has launched a new online salesroom and exciting bidding platform features, thereby moving a step further in its online bidding services.

In the current year’s five months, and having completed 113 sales, the company achieved substantial growth in online participation compared to the equivalent period in 2014. All the online bidding on sothebys.com and ebay.com/sothebys has been delivered through a partnership with Invaluable. The number of collectors bidding online has increased around 55 percent leading to a 35 percent increase in the value of successful bids.

Invaluable is Sotheby’s core technology partner for online bidding. Sotheby’s uses Invaluable’s tools as the single online bidding platform to power sales on sothebys.com and ebay.com/sothebys.

The new salesroom and bidding platform features include private messaging, along with enhanced video streaming, which has been optimized to support hundreds of thousands of concurrent video attendees without loss of timing or delay. This ensures that all auction participants are able to follow along in real-time, regardless of their location.

“As Sotheby’s continues to expand its reach into the online space, we are extremely pleased to be working with Invaluable as our technology partner to deliver the best possible user experience online,” said David Goodman, Sotheby’s Chief Digital Officer. “The technology integrates seamlessly into our web bidding platforms, helping us to grow the e-commerce portion of our business and attract new clients who enjoy the convenience and accessibility that real-time online bidding provides. Over the course of 113 sales, we have seen rapidly-increasing engagement translating into significant growth and new auction records, ” Goodman added further.

Amongst the top 10 online purchases made since the partnership of Sotheby’s and Invaluable, jewellery has been the most popular. It included a platinum and diamond ring which sold for $3.25 million, and others include a fancy light pink diamond and diamond ring and a platinum, diamond and sapphire ring, selling for $1.93 million each.

The first joint Invaluable-Sotheby’s sale was held on 19th March this year in London. Since the launch partnership, Invaluable has also enabled online bidding on Sotheby’s sales taking place in New York City, the UK, Paris, Hong Kong, Doha Zurich, Milan and Geneva.