47 Ways To Improve Etopps

1. Show a calendar on the home page. By moving your mouse over a day on the calendar that's in bold, a small window pops up, showing upcoming IPOs, autograph offerings, scheduled availability of in-hands, and fantasy baseball and football days.
2. Mark Sapir updates us via blog that has an RSS feed so you can subscribe rather than having to check the updates section each time you're on the etopps website.
3. Make the availability of the message board more prominent than a text link at the top of the home page.
4. Offer a vote before each baseball season to determine which veterans will be IPO'd
   
5. Offer a vote before each football season to determine which veterans will be IPO'd.
6. Secure hockey availability when Upper Deck's contract runs out (next year).
7. Have a blog for IT updates by the Topps IT guy and for feedback by the community for what works and what doesn't when new features are introduced to the website.
8. Provide a myspace.com widget, giving members the option of providing a slideshow of thumbnail pics of etopps cards from their portfolios or any cards they want to include for this feature.
9. Same for facebook.
   
10. Give the tradepost more flexibility. Currently a trade can only be one card you want for x number of cards you're willing to trade (up to 5 different) or in the ratio of 1:x. Why can't we have x:x or x:1?
11. Have a dedicated etopps shop that sells products with the etopps logo on it (a la cafe press or zazzle) and offer t-shirts, baseball caps, jerseys, magnets, keychains, mouse pads, coffe mugs, buttons and patches. Members can purchase either with their credit card or for reward points. Since these products are really free advertising for etopps, offer these products discounted or offer free shipping.
12. Offer in-hand baggies in the etopps shop.
13. Post an etopps policy about their role if an etopps member wants to sell etopps in-hands at a card show regarding promotion, recruiting new member incentive, etc.
    
14. Expand the tradepost to be able to trade items from the etopps shop for cards and/or reward points.
15. Be able to use reward points for purchases on the Topps website store.
    
16. Analysis of each allocation like woot.com's stats for each order. Show where purchases were made, how fast, which days of the week the orders were placed, who was the first, who was the last by username or other fun ways to see our ordering behavior.
17. For IPOs, have a raffle based on order number. In the email that informs you how many you were allocated, you'll also receive a four digit number. After each allocation, announce on the blog which order number was selected at random for an extra card. It will be up to the member to claim based on their order number and four digit number that will have to match.
18. Have a contest for each IPO season's design. Use a website or software program we can download and be able to design based on templates for poses, backgrounds, location for player's name, colors and where to place the etopps logo. Winning design gets reward points or gift certicate for the etopps store.
19. Create a video to promote each upcoming IPO season's design with kudos to the winning designer in the video that appears on youtube, the home page and the Topps home page.
20. Create a video to show how the etopps allocation works and show highlights of past econs, Nationals and include pics of cards from each sport to appear as a link on the home page in big letter banner.
21. Have a temporary blog that outlines the progress of each econ as it gets prepared
    
22. Get a new tag line for the home page. Are you fan enough? needs to be updated.
23. Have moderators (2-3) who use the message board and decide which posts should be nuked.
24. On every post that shows up on the message board, provide an link to report abuse to the moderators.
25. On the home page, provide a video of the etopps storage warehouse for what occurs between receiving an order and shipment.
26. Fix the online damaged card return request feature.
27. Include a free etopps card stand with the purchase of an etopps autograph.
28. Include a photo of athlete signing his etopps cards (on the home page) along with a signed etopps card scan whenever an autograph is offered.
29. Offer photo of athlete signing etopps card with COA in the mailing of the etopps card.
30. Have an etopps raffle in which the winner gets to have an online meet & greet with the athlete at the time of the signing of his etopps cards.
    
31. Provide buying stats (like on woot.com) after an autograph offering after it sells out.
    
32. After each season's IPO, have a vote for which veterans to be autographed for the following season.
    
33. Coordinate promoting each new speciality set (such as the Allen and Ginter Super Bowl Champs series 2) on Beckett's website in a video interview with Mark and a representative from Beckett.
34. Offer a limited-time grading discount for etopps cards on at least a yearly or semi-annual basis.
35. Same offer for PSA including a discount on yearly membership.
36. Launch a kids version of etopps in which the cards are only available in-port. Redemption code scratch-off cards are inserted in certain sets of Topps cardboard products and after registering, kids can "claim" up to 3 cards from a set of X cards. They are not randomly allocated these three cards but instead they can scroll through the list to see what's available, giving them the incentive to collect the entire set and give a prize (like with the fantasy games) for collecting the entire set.
    
37. Introduce a non-sports set that has a huge following like Star Wars.
38. Etopps starts using Twitter to promote the website by announcing IPOs and any other updates.
39. Provide a sitemap on the website to make it easier to find what you're looking for.
40. Add a Welcome section on the message board for new members.
41. Add a FAQ thread that's locked and only updated by the moderator in the Welcome section before newbie questions are posted over and over and over again.
42. Offer a customer service phone number to members for the in-hand storage warehouse.
43. Offer a Q & A for the design team for etopps
44. Post a video that shows the high quality standards of what goes into etopps in-hand cards.
45. Start using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on Google.
46. Remove the emoticons on the message board and replace it with a signature section so we can include member ids for social media websites, ebay, or other message board ids.
    
47. Show this list to Michael Eisner :)