Drupal fits all, does it? Survey

The idea that drupal fits all presumes that every user needs a custom site. With sites like MySpace and Facebook providing solid forums for generic frameworks that people can plug in their content around, drupal will always be for a very specific user -- someone who wants to build an application with custom dynamic functionality. This level of expectation is only found in relatively sophisticated and/or ambitious people who really are prepared for a higher learning curve/buy-in than the average SN yokel who is willing to give up a lot of control over preparation in exchange for a low learning curve and instant gratification.

In short, the need for precise control over modules, layout and branding is an institutional need, not a consumer need; Drupal will always attract more institutional users, where social networks will always be able to attract members with more personal needs for expression (bloggers). Nobody NEEDS a CMS to blog, though some may choose that level of ownership and responsibility.

Bingo makes a salient point when considering how to market the product and what language to employ when appealing to a target audience. Its also a useful observation about who the target audience should be.

(One added appeal to the consumer is for them to feel part of the Open Source revolution, as opposed to the specific Drupal product. I think as marketers, this is one buzz area that's really happening for us at the moment.)

A really interesting development in marketing philosophies is the notion of "permission marketing". That is, someone being willing and open to purchase your product before they've even heard about you - think Yellow Pages. Anyone who picks up that book is ready to purchase. Researchers report that individuals are bombarded with over 1,000 advertisements each day in various forms, billboards, radio, mail, newspapers, TV, sms, banner ads online, the sides of buses, the supermarket shelf, take away containers, coffee cups, the list goes on. We become accustomed to "tuning out" or not listening to what I would call "background noise". What's great about permission marketing, however, is that you're not talking to people who have tuned out or blocked your message before you've even started. Let's not forget the added benefit of this being ethical marketing.

So, it is for this reason that knowing what people are actually wanting to use Drupal for and when and how is really important. We don't want our marketing to be inconsequential "background noise". So thanks for your post Bingomanatee, I found it a really insightful observation.

EmSpace Lisa

who are you and why are you doing a survey?

David Ogilvy had a lot to say about treating customers like rational adults that has been paved over by the "Image is substance" generation. "Positioning" is another classic that describes how fundamental it is to choose the approach that meets your markets needs.

The fact is, Drupal clients and CMS users are a very distinct nature. They are not brochure designers -- those people can do quite well with Dreamweaver and the odd forum module. They are not Social Network members -- those people are well served by the existing MyFaceBookLink cloud.

They are not the upper echelon web applications (Digg.com, Amazon, etc.) For good or for ill, those type of people tend to roll their own code and are adamant and territorial about the ability to tweak and optimize their database, server loads, etc. Where Digg 2.0 might be a Drupal App, once you get beyond a certain volume, Drupal would be at best a portal into a custom module with a highly detailed and opaque inner mechanism. (For instance I would not suggest Drupal to my current client, http:://www.cleanpowerfinance.com; the mechanics are so insane in solar calculus that Drupal would get in the way. However as a catalog of components -- panels, inverters, clients -- it would be a great partial solution AROUND our customer proposal.) As someone who once got let go from a major site for trying to insert Zend Framework into the mix (and making jokes about Michael Jackson)

I can tell you that most larger houses are not looking for or based on ANY framework. You could not, for instance, market Drupal inside something like Zynga, which gets huge traffic from online games and doesn't want anything that comes betwen the URL and the returned data that could possibly interfere with the efficiency of their servers. And even if they were most of them would NEVER consider a non OOP framework as a serious basis for an enterprise app!

Therefore Drupal is not suited for the low end of the long tail or the spike of the enterprise market. It belongs to the solid hump in the middle of people who are building their site around a very customized and fast-varying set of data that needs synergy and ease of modification/association. They may be bloggers, but they are bloggers with a dream of a shopping cart, a custom review section, and an integrated forum. Their perception of their need for custom code is limited and easily satisfied by a tour of CCK.

Not that Drupal is not used commercially -- I'm constantly seeing commercial use in the Drupal by companies like Warner Brothers Records for artist sites, and some friends in a large ticket vending site are looking at it for localization as well. However, the types of likely adapters are those who are not seeing custom coding as the most important part of their application; they are looking for a modular and expandable framework for their application and are attracted first and foremost by the existing and understandable base of modules.

Please don't assume any of the above reflects the fitness of Drupal for any given task; I am simply commenting on the type of users who are likely to perceive Drupal as the appropriate vehicle for their application. If, for instance, Drupal was written in Java, it would have an appeal to an entirely different level of audience; there really isn't a dominant Java CMS, that I know of anyway. And the CMS tag has a positioning impact all its own, that carries some mental baggage as well. Custom coders and CMS assemblers tend to be a different crowd; prepackaged systems are regarded by many hard core people as inherently inefficient and so dictatorial that they force you to develop "against the grain" of a project. And like most perceptions, this one is quite self fulfilling.

As to my "Marketing background" -- I started in visual design, and found that the people who had the most to say about design were the people who had studied its application in marketing. Most people who teach visual theory are very academic about the way colors make you "Feel" (which once you begin to study interational design and color perception becomes extremely relative anyway) as opposed to what a commercial designer should really be concerned with, which is what font makes your customer fork over their cash fastest.

since this seems to be spam to direct traffic to that site, msimanga has been blocked.