Dear buyer,

We want your OPENLANE experience to be the best experience possible. Quick. Easy. And completely hassle-free. We usually accomplish this with little updates and by introducing handy new services. But, we have decided it was time to start a major overhaul of the website. The result? Game-changing improvements that deliver the best experience possible. We started with a few new features ...

The seller score

Exactly how well do our sellers meet expectations? It’s time you found out. For quite some time, OPENLANE has been monitoring their performance in four key areas: 

• The quality of vehicle descriptions.
• How often sellers accept the highest bid on a vehicle. For this, we only look at the highest bids which are close to the estimated price.
• How long sellers take to assign a car after the auction.
• How soon they release a car that’s been paid for.

Price barometer

You may remember reading about plans for the price barometer quite some time ago. It’s now a reality. The price barometer is a three-colour system that works in tandem with the estimated price to show you how attractive your bid is. If you know what the colours on traffic lights mean, you’ll be able to use the price barometer without any issues:

Red: Your bid will probably stop where it is. You haven’t reached the estimated price for a vehicle and run every risk of being outbid or falling below the seller’s minimum price.

Yellow: Your bid might proceed ... The estimated price is at the end of this zone. You’ll need to cross your fingers to win … or increase your bid.

Green: Your bid is in the right position to move ahead. You’ve passed the estimated price and are where the action is! There’s now a higher chance your bid will win and far more likelihood that the seller will accept your bid and assign the car to you.

For each auction and for each area, we awarded them a score out of five. The BI team has rolled up its sleeves and tinkered with the data to calculate a total seller score. You’ll see this seller score on every car or, if you like, for every seller, as long as we have enough data. But you don’t just have the overall result: click where it says score details and you’ll find out just how well a seller does in each of the key areas. 

You’ll see the price barometer on most cars, except cars in x-Time or Buy Now auctions. While it doesn’t guarantee you a win or a loss, it does indicate how attractive your bid is and is an awesome way to help you win more cars!

Consumer market price

Do you ever hesitate about bidding on a certain car? You may have doubts about its value on your market … But not anymore. You’ll now see the consumer market price for a vehicle. This is the average price that the make and model is sold for in your local market. While it doesn’t take damage into account, it does include VAT and gives you a very good idea of whether you would benefit from bidding on a certain car. Especially when you combine it with the price barometer. This feature is available for Spain & Portugal. Soon, other countries will follow.

Estimated transport times

Was this on your wish list? Because we have good news! With our expanded list of transport destinations, OPENLANE has been able to introduce standard transport on our most common routes. And this has given us plenty of data and numbers to crunch. The result? We are now able to give you a good idea of when to expect your car. There are certain variables that are difficult to predict, such as how long it will take you to pay for a car or the seller to release it, so our estimated transport times are, without any doubt, estimates. However, they give you the date range in which to expect delivery and make life that little bit simpler.

A user-friendly design

You may have noticed that we haven’t just added new features. We have updated the design of the car description page too. It is light, simple to navigate and filled with easy-to-digest information. It’s exactly what you need in the dynamic auction environment where everything changes in the blink of an eye:

• Anytime there’s something important you need to know about, you’ll see it explicitly indicated.
• Instead of looking for important info, you’ll now find it highlighted in blue boxes. If, for example, COC is not available, you’ll find it clearly marked out.
• We have added improvements to ensure consistently. Our use of icons and colours is made even easier with easily accessible text explanations added to explain what icons and colours mean.

Our ‘To do’ list

Our major overhaul isn’t finished yet. Over the next twelve to fifteen months, we have a few exciting new additions to work on. The most important of these is the My selection page and a new Search page. Your My account page will be undergoing a makeover and the Confirmation page will be updated too. Finally, we have also decided to add a few extras to your MyBids. Very soon, you’ll see new icons that give you immediate access to the most popular options and pages on the OPENLANE site. On top of this? We want to brush up our Damage descriptions. And we decide to take the Home page to the next level too … All these ideas are underway, but the most important ideas are the ones you have. How can we make OPENLANE run better for you? We would love to hear any thought or requests you might have on the matter.

For now, it’s time to start your engine, head to OPENLANE and take a look at all the new changes. I would really like to know what you think of them, so please email your thoughts and feedback to me at [email protected].

Happy bidding!

Gino Vleminckx
Chief Commercial Officer
OPENLANE