Consignment Intake Pages That Bring In Better Lots

A consignment intake page brings in better lots when it answers the seller’s real questions before asking for their phone number: what you accept, how the seller’s commission works, when they get paid after the hammer, who moves the property, and what happens to lots that do not sell. Most auction house websites do the opposite. They put a contact form under a paragraph about the company’s history, and then wonder why the submissions are a box of costume jewellery and a broken treadmill.

The consignment side of an auction house website is usually the neglected half, and it is the half where a single page can change a season. One farm retirement, one full estate, one plant closure can fill a sale that a hundred casual bidder visits never would. This article is about building that page properly: the reader, the answers, the form, the three paths a consignor arrives by, and how to handle the question every auction house gets asked first.

The consignor is not the bidder

A consignor reads slowly, decides once, and is choosing a business partner rather than a Saturday activity. That single difference should change almost every writing decision on the page. A bidder wants a date, an address and a paddle number in ten seconds. A consignor wants to know whether they can trust you with the contents of their mother’s house, or with the equipment that represented thirty years of a working farm, and they are not in a hurry to find out.

The emotional context is usually heavier too. A large share of consignment enquiries arrive attached to a death, a divorce, a foreclosure, a move into care, or the end of a working life. The person writing to you may be an executor carrying out an obligation under time pressure from a probate court, or a widow clearing a house she does not want to clear. Copy that would read as energetic on a bidder page reads as insensitive here. Plain, calm and specific is the register, and specificity is what actually builds trust: an exact settlement window is more reassuring than any sentence about how much you care.

The decision cycle is longer as well. A consignor typically looks at three or four houses, compares what each one publishes, and calls the one that answered the most questions without being asked. That is the competitive mechanism a consignment page is operating inside. You are not persuading them; you are being more legible than the other three.

The five answers a consignment page must give

A consignment page must answer five things before it asks for anything, and a page that does all five will out-convert a better-designed page that does none of them. Each of these is a question a consignor asks on the phone, which means every one you answer in writing is a call you do not have to take and a caller who arrives already qualified.

What you accept, and what you do not

Say what you sell well, then say what you turn away. The first list qualifies; the second list disqualifies, and the second list is the one that saves the most time on both sides. An auction house that publishes “we do not take upholstered furniture, mass-market china, exercise equipment, encyclopaedia sets or pianos without a prior look” will lose a few enquiries it never wanted and gain the trust of everyone who reads it, because it reads as a house that knows its market rather than one that will take anything and hope.

Be specific inside the categories, too. “Farm equipment” is a category; “tractors, combines, tillage, grain handling, livestock equipment, shop tools and farm-related antiques, titled trucks and trailers” is a list a retiring farmer can check their own yard against. “Estate contents” is a category; “single-owner collections, antique and period furniture, jewellery, coins, firearms where lawful, art, tools and garage contents, whole-house clean-outs by arrangement” is something an executor can act on.

If you set a minimum, publish it. A house that only takes consignments above a certain total value, or only whole estates rather than individual pieces, should say so in a plain sentence. The enquiries you lose were never going to become sales, and the ones you keep arrive knowing the terms.

Commission, in plain terms

Publish the structure of the seller’s commission even if you cannot publish a single number, because a consignor cannot compare houses without it. There is a real reason rates vary: a single high-value lot, a full estate, and a general consignment are different amounts of work, and the rate that fits one does not fit the others. But “rates are negotiable, call us” tells a seller nothing and reads as evasion.

What you can publish without committing to a number:

• Whether the commission is a percentage of the hammer price, and whether it is banded by lot value or by category.
• Whether a buyer’s premium is charged on top, and that the buyer’s premium is paid by the buyer rather than deducted from the seller’s proceeds.
• What additional charges exist, if any: listing or lotting fees, photography, cataloguing, transport, cleaning, disposal of unsaleable items, or a minimum per-lot charge.
• What changes the rate, in general terms: total consignment value, whether the sale is on site or at your facility, whether you handle the pack and haul.
• Whether credit card and online bidding fees are passed on.

Then say plainly that the exact terms are confirmed in a written consignment agreement before anything moves. That sentence does more for trust than any published rate, because it tells the reader there will be a document and no surprises. Note also that nothing on a website constitutes a contract; the agreement does.

Settlement timing

State when the consignor gets paid, counted from sale day, and state it as a number of days. This is the question that decides the most consignments and the one least often answered on auction websites. An executor with a probate timetable, or a farmer with a loan to clear, needs to know whether settlement is fourteen days after the sale, thirty days, or after the buyer’s payment clears, whichever is later.

Be honest about the conditions, because they are normal in this trade and every consignor has heard them before: settlement follows buyer payment, unpaid lots may delay a portion, titled items may wait on paperwork. Explain how you handle the awkward cases, such as a lot won by a bidder who never pays. Saying “we settle within twenty-one days of sale day for cleared lots, and we tell you within five days if a lot has not been paid for” is far stronger than silence, even though it is a more complicated promise.

Say how they are paid as well. Cheque, bank transfer, in person at the office. And say what statement they receive: a settlement sheet showing each lot, its hammer price, the commission taken and any charges, so the consignor can reconcile it against their own list.

Transport, pickup and who moves what

Say who moves the property and at whose cost, because this question decides whether a consignment is even feasible for the seller. A widow clearing a house and a dealer with a van have completely different constraints, and both need to know before they call.

Cover the practical cases: whether you collect, whether you charge for collection and how that is calculated, what you can lift (a house of furniture versus a shop full of machinery needing rigging), whether you run on-site sales where nothing moves at all, and what happens with items too large or too fixed to move. For farm and heavy equipment specifically, say whether you handle transport of non-running machinery, and what condition a piece needs to be in to be moved. For industrial liquidation, say whether rigging and plant access are arranged by you or by the buyer.

An on-site sale option deserves its own paragraph if you offer it, because many consignors do not know it exists. The idea that the auction can come to the farm, the plant or the house, rather than the contents being moved to a gallery first, is often the detail that makes a large consignment possible.

Unsold lots and no-sale terms

Say what happens to a lot that does not sell, in a specific sentence, because a consignor is quietly afraid of getting the truckload back. Options differ by house: rolled into the next sale, offered at a lower reserve, returned at the consignor’s cost, donated by prior agreement, or disposed of. Whichever you do, publish it.

Explain your reserve policy here too, in plain language. Whether you accept reserves at all, whether there is a minimum lot value for a reserve, what fee applies if a reserved lot fails to sell, and how a reserve is agreed before the sale. Reserves are the most commonly misunderstood part of the consignment relationship, and a paragraph explaining how they work at your house does more to prevent disputes than anything in the agreement itself.

The intake form, and what actually gets filled in on a phone

The intake form should be finishable on a phone in about two minutes, which in practice means roughly six to eight fields. Every additional field is a chance to abandon, and the consignment enquiry is exactly the sort of form a person starts while standing in a barn or a half-cleared living room.

The fields that earn their place

• Name. One field, not first and last as separate required boxes.
• Phone. The primary channel for this audience; most consignment conversations happen by voice.
• Email. For sending the agreement and the settlement sheet later.
• Town or county. This is the qualifier that tells you whether the consignment is even in your travel range, and it is one tap.
• What you have, as a category picker. Estate contents, farm and heavy equipment, firearms, vehicles, business or plant liquidation, art and antiques, other. A short list of your real categories.
• A short free-text description. One box, generously sized, with a label that prompts usefully: what it is, roughly how much of it, and where it is now.
• Photos. Optional, but the single most valuable field on the form.
• Timeframe. A four-option picker: as soon as possible, within a month, within three months, just exploring. This is the field that lets you sort your callback list.

Almost everything else belongs in the follow-up call. You do not need the year of the tractor, the number of rooms, the probate reference or the preferred sale date in a web form, because all of those are questions whose answers you want to react to in real time.

Form mechanics that decide completion

The mechanics matter more than the design. Nielsen Norman Group’s form usability guidance is a useful checklist here, and a few points apply directly to a phone-first audience that skews older than the average web form’s:

Use visible labels above the fields, and never use placeholder text as the label. Placeholders vanish the moment someone starts typing, which NN/g documents as an ongoing usability problem because it removes the reminder exactly when the user needs it, and they are typically low contrast, which matters a great deal to a consignor in their seventies.

Use a single column. Mark optional fields rather than required ones if most are required. Use the correct input types so a phone shows the numeric keypad for the phone number and the email keyboard for the email, which is one of the basic wins in web.dev’s forms guidance. Validate gently, at the end and in plain language, and never clear the form on an error. And keep the submit button labelled with what it does, “Send my consignment enquiry,” rather than “Submit.”

One more thing that is easy to miss: the confirmation. After submission, tell the person what happens next and when, in a specific sentence. “We will call you within one working day” is worth more than a generic thank-you, and it stops the second enquiry to the house down the road.

Photo upload expectations

Ask for photos, set the expectation low, and make it work from a phone camera roll. The instruction that gets the best results is something like: “Five or six photos taken on your phone are plenty. A wide shot of the room or yard, and a closer shot of anything you think is the best piece. They do not need to be tidy.”

That phrasing does real work. Consignors delay for weeks because they think they need to clean the house or arrange the equipment before photographing it, and a cluttered wide shot of an unsorted garage tells you more about whether it is worth a visit than a carefully staged photo of one item. Accept the common phone formats, allow multiple files at once, show upload progress, and make sure a large file from a modern phone camera does not silently fail. A file size limit that rejects a standard phone photo without saying why is a surprisingly common way to lose an enquiry.

If you cannot support uploads reliably, offer a clear alternative: a phone number they can text photos to, or an email address. Do not simply omit the ask, because photos are what let you qualify a consignment without driving ninety minutes to look at a shed.

Three readers, three paths

One generic consignment page forces every seller to translate their situation into your categories, and the three most common consignment situations are different enough to deserve their own pages. Each has a different vocabulary, a different anxiety and a different deadline.

The estate executor

An executor is fulfilling a legal obligation, often under a probate timetable and often with other beneficiaries watching. Their concerns are documentation, fairness and speed: they need a defensible record of what sold and for how much, a settlement sheet a court or a sibling can read, and a process that finishes inside a deadline set by someone else.

Write to that. Explain the settlement sheet in detail, explain how you handle a whole-house situation including the items that will not sell, explain how quickly you can be on site, and explain what you need from them in terms of authority to sell. Use the words they use: estate, executor, administrator, probate, beneficiaries, clean-out. Say plainly that you are not lawyers and that anything touching probate should go through their solicitor or attorney; the page is about the sale, not the estate administration.

The dealer or trade consignor

A dealer is a repeat consignor doing arithmetic. They are comparing your commission to the next house’s, your sale calendar to their inventory turn, and your buyer pool to the goods they are trying to move. They do not need reassurance and they do not want a story.

Write short and put the numbers first. Commission structure, per-lot charges, the sale calendar, lotting deadlines, settlement terms, how many lots you can take per sale, and whether there is a different rate for volume. A dealer page can be almost a table. The one thing they do want beyond the terms is evidence of your buyer pool in their category, which is where sale results and the archive of past sales earn their keep.

The farm retirement or business closure

A retiring farmer or a closing business is disposing of a working life, usually once, and usually with a deadline set by a land sale, a lease end or a bank. The scale is large, the items are heavy, and the questions are logistical: can you sell it where it stands, how long does it take to catalogue a yard, what happens to the things that are not worth selling, and how do titles and registrations work.

This page should lead with the on-site sale if you offer one, because that is the answer to most of their logistics at once. Cover cataloguing time, preview arrangements, what happens with fuel, chemicals and anything that cannot legally be sold, whether you handle the clean-up of the unsold remainder, and how settlement works when the sale total is large. The register here should acknowledge that this is a significant event without being sentimental about it.

“What is this worth”, and how to answer it honestly

Answer the valuation question by explaining how auction value is established, never by giving a figure, and say clearly on the page that a website is not an appraisal. This is the first question almost every consignor asks, and it is the one where an auction house website can do real harm by being helpful in the wrong way.

A few reasons to be careful. A figure put in writing becomes an expectation, and an expectation that the room does not meet on sale day becomes a dispute. Formal appraisal is a distinct professional service with its own standards and, in many places, its own credentials. And nobody can responsibly value an item from a photograph and a sentence of description.

What the page can honestly do:

• Explain the mechanism. At auction the price is set by the bidders in the room and online on the day. Condition, completeness, provenance where relevant, the season, and who happens to be bidding all move it.
• Point at real results. An archive of past sales showing what comparable lots actually made is the most useful thing you can give a consignor, because it is evidence rather than opinion. “Similar tractors in our spring sales have made a range you can see here” is honest; “your tractor is worth X” is not.
• Explain reserves. A reserve is how a consignor protects themselves against a bad day in the room, and explaining your reserve policy addresses the underlying anxiety behind the valuation question.
• Offer the proper route. If you or a colleague provide formal appraisals, say so and describe it as a separate service with its own terms. If you do not, say that as well and suggest they seek a qualified appraiser for insurance or probate purposes.
• Describe your own process. “Send photos, we will tell you whether it is a fit for one of our sales and what category it would sit in, and we will discuss expectations in person before anything is agreed” is a complete and honest answer that commits to nothing.

Put a short, plain disclaimer near this section: information on the page is general, it is not an appraisal, a valuation or legal advice, and no estimate is given until an item has been seen. That sentence protects the house and, more usefully, signals that you take the distinction seriously, which is exactly the impression a cautious consignor is looking for.

Structuring the page so consignors actually find it

A consignment page ranks by targeting a different query family from your sale pages, which means it needs its own headings, its own vocabulary and usually more than one page. Bidder searches are date-driven. Consignor searches are category-and-place driven, and they are often phrased as questions.

Phrase headings the way a seller asks the question, then answer in the first sentence beneath. “Who buys farm equipment at auction in Lancaster County,” “what commission do you charge to sell an estate,” “how long until I get paid after the auction,” “do you take a whole house of contents.” Google’s guidance on people-first content describes the same instinct from the other direction: write for the person with the question, and the ranking follows from usefulness rather than from keyword placement.

Split by category rather than cramming everything into one page. A farm and heavy equipment consignment page, an estate and household contents page, a firearms page, a business liquidation page. Each carries the same five answers, but with the terms, logistics and vocabulary that fit that category. The estate page talks about executors and clean-outs; the equipment page talks about hours on the meter, titles and transport of non-running machinery.

Add the questions section to the page itself, in visible text, and mark it up with FAQPage structured data where the markup matches the visible wording exactly. Consignor questions are almost perfectly shaped for this, because they are literally questions, and it is also what lets an AI answer tool quote your commission structure or settlement window when someone asks it directly.

Link it properly. The consignment page should be reachable from the main navigation, from the footer, from every sale page (the bidder at today’s sale is a plausible consignor for the next one), and from the sale results archive, which is where someone researching what their own property might make will end up.

And keep it fast. Consignment enquiries frequently arrive from a phone in a barn or a driveway on a weak signal, and a page with an unoptimised gallery will not load there at all. The Core Web Vitals thresholds, a Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, an Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds and a Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1, are a reasonable budget for any page whose job is to receive a form submission from a field.

Knowing whether the page is working

Measure qualified enquiries per month and the share of them you actually take, not the raw submission count. A page that produces twelve enquiries of which eight become consignments is doing better work than one producing forty of which six are a fit, and the second page is also costing you hours of phone time.

Four numbers worth keeping:

• Enquiries by category page, so you can see which of your consignment categories the site is actually reaching.
• Acceptance rate, the share of enquiries that become signed consignments. If it is low, the page is under-qualifying: the accept and refuse lists are probably too vague.
• Form completion rate, the share of people who start the form and finish it. A low rate almost always means too many fields or a broken upload.
• Total hammer value traceable to web enquiries, per season. This is the number that justifies the page’s existence, and it is usually far larger than anyone expects.

Watch the enquiries themselves, too. The questions people still ask in the free-text box are a direct list of what your page failed to answer, and rewriting the page around those questions two or three times a year is the cheapest improvement available.

If you would rather not build this yourself

The consignment side is structural website work, and it is what we do: we build and manage the site, you keep running the sale and you set every term on it. A build includes the consignment category pages, an intake form that works on a phone with photo upload, and routing so an enquiry arrives somewhere you will act on it rather than in a shared inbox. Plans and the one-time build fee, invoiced only after the site is live, are on the pricing page.

If it is easier to look at than to read about, book a demo and we will walk through a consignment page for your sale type on screen. To be plain about it: we are not auctioneers, appraisers or lawyers, nothing here is valuation, licensing or legal advice, and every commission, settlement and reserve term described on your site is yours to set.