MadBid is a gamified e-commerce website that welcomes over 4 million registered users to have fun while shopping. Since 2008, the team have been researching the best ways to bring value and entertainment to online shoppers. Somewhere along the way the perception of MadBid has gone through a few changes. We ran a nationwide survey to find out what the British public thinks about MadBid, and why the question ‘Is MadBid Scam?’ still crops up.

“We asked the public if they’ve heard of online auctions, surprisingly 52% of people have never heard of them or are not sure how they work!”

When asked, why choose MadBid? Curiosity was the driving factor, followed by bargains and ‘looked like fun’, so I guess we are on the right path.

Online Auctions

We were quite flattered that so many of you have heard of MadBid (TV adverts seem to be working) but after reading some of the comment online we thought we would try to understand why this question of ‘is MadBid a scam?’ was floating around. So we started at the roots, we asked the public if they’ve heard of online auctions, and surprisingly 52% of people asked have never heard of them or are not sure how they work. So this gave us an indication why the MadBid auction model might be a bit tricky for people to get their heads around. What was quite comforting is that the majority of people, who were interested in trying out an online auction, said they would if it was fun to take part in.

Products

So taking into account that MadBid needs to seriously think about developing more information on how online auctions work (maybe a few infographics? What do you think? Comment below), we wanted to find out if we are even selling the right products. We asked, what kind of products do you purchase online? This responses weren’t very useful; 24% answered ‘Everything I could possibly need’ and the rest were varied between Clothing/ Electronics/ Travel and Food.

So what is wrong with MadBid?

So we found out that we have the right products, we have the right tools to ensure our online auctions are fun, so what is wrong with MadBid? When we asked the public to describe MadBid in a few words, we were a little confused and worried about the type of consumers that are shopping on our site. The main buzzwords to describe MadBid were trust issues and excitement, which is surely a recipe for a really awkward relationship?

We would like to thank everyone that took part in the survey, it has really given us plenty to think about, and we promise we are working on the ‘Trust’ thing so you can relax and simply enjoy the MadBid shopping experience without a care in the world.

If you have any further feedback or have any ideas on what would help make your MadBid experience more fun, please feel free to comment below.

Evelina Jankauskyte is a blogger and social media manager for madbid.com

Related to this Article
–  MadBid vs eBid, here is our summary of the different types of online auctions

–  You can find great bargains with online auctions, see our pick of the weird products you can get online

–  Still wondering how MadBid works? Read the MadBid reviews and be in the know