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We are often asked about the efficacy and efficiency of the Drupal content management system and I wanted to share some concrete examples of how the system can be helpful to your organization or business.

Case Study: Increase in signups

One of our clients converted to a Drupal/CiviCRM mix in 2012 and that year was their biggest year in history, in terms of signups. We attribute this to the ease of use of the signup form as well as the ease with which the CiviCRM process allowed the manager to process applications and easily "weed out" applicants that didn't fit their profile, as well as easily contact those applicants who were a good fit.

In this case, the ease of use of the Drupal and CiviCRM application forms and reporting system directly contributed to the ability for staff to efficiently use their time.  "It is soooooo easy to do stuff now. In 2012 we registered more new recipients per month than we ever have in history!! We are up to our gills over here."

Case Study: Increase in site visitors

When we converted the A Successful Woman website to a Drupal version, we saw a measurable increase (67%) in unique visitors, most probably due to the ease of adding new content and the ability for the site to automatically update the search engines with new content. We see the "crossover" happening as new content was added on the Drupal platform. Notice the steady increase (blue line) in the baseline of visitors as time passes and the site becomes increasingly more "crawled".

Case Study: 10%+ increase in revenue

One of our membership organizations offers annual memberships, paid online. The previous system was somewhat difficult to manage and did not integrate with a mailing list, which was one of the premium features of membership with the organization. Converting to Drupal not only increased revenue but we saw a 10% increase in unique visitors to the site.

We attribute the increase in revenue to the easy notifications that are auto-sent from the website to the user to prompt them to renew their membership. Multiple notifications are sent in this case, to give the user ample opportunity to pay online. Because the rest of the process is automated, the user then gains access to all facets of membership such as a directory listing, access to the e-mail listserv, and all members-only content such as resources, slideshows, webinars, and event handouts.

Jan 1 through Apr 30 2012 Revenue (before conversion)

Total revenue = $66,677 in that timeframe

Jan 1 through Apr 30 2013 Revenue (after conversion)

Total revenue = $74,280.50 in that timeframe

On the Ubercart e-commerce solution that we typically use, there are many, many different options to handle different types of needs, such as:

• Collecting membership dues and assigning appropriate permissions and roles based on the product purchase
• Selling products from a single store
• Selling products in a marketplace situation, with multiple sellers
• Offering a "catalog" of items
• Selling event tickets
• Providing digital downloads

There are many options within the available "universe" of tools. Here are some tips that we've used to great effect:

1) Integrating Follow-ups

If your customer is in the process of purchasing something, and then decides against fulfilling the order so that the cart is now "inactive" or "abandoned," it's possible to set up the "Follow-ups" module to send a reminder e-mail to that person within a certain time frame. We use this with a coupon and/or a gentle prompt with a customer service phone number if the customer is having issues. This e-mail typically encourages the user to complete their chectkout.

This can also be used as a follow-up prompting a product review, or some other action that you'd like the customer to take, if the followup is sent within a certain time frame (such as 100 hours after an order is marked as shipped).

2) Offering discount coupons

The coupon code is a time-honored way to encourage your followers to peruse the catalog. Our clients offer codes to their Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest users, driving them back to the website to purchase a product or service.

3) Assigning a role upon purchase

For membership organizations, being able to track a user's status can be made more automatic by offering a certain role for a certain time frame (for example, "paid member status for 365 days") after the purchase is made. There is an automatic followup that can be sent to the member within, say, two weeks of their expiration date. By using "views" of the data to figure out who is due to follow up, or who is recently expired, you can retain your general membership and increase the automation of collecting dues.

4) Digital download upon purchase

It's possible to offer a digital purchase, such as a music track, a set of images, or a white paper or report. By offering the digital download, when a customer checks out, they receive a unique e-mailed link to download a copy of the file. The link is valid for a certain number of downloads and/or must be used within a certain time frame. The link expires after the download is complete.

5) The "Marketplace"

The Ubercart Marketplace module allows a store owner to offer "sub-classes" of products where other storekeepers may sell products within the e-store, with a potential for a commission to be charged on any sale originated in that marketplace. The Marketplace module offers a powerful way to aggregate multiple sellers' products into one catalog and automate the process of notifications and checkout in exchange for a variable fee, such as a fee charged to set up a storefront and/or a fee charged on every purchase.

6) Affiliate sales

With affiliate marketing, an affiliate may use their own code and generate a link to a product on your store, gaining a percentage of any sales that originate through that link. Ubercart Affiliates offers a way for the store owner to control, report on, and manage affiliate-generated sales and commissions, on both physical products and digital downloads.

7) Shipping, taxes, additional fees

It's possible to configure your store to match your business-specific needs regarding shipping, taxes, or other fees. For example, California-based companies add extra "Rules" to collect tax based on the customer's city, based on Board of Equalization requirements.

For one of our clients, they have an E-junkie store to handle digital downloads as well as to accept payments for physical products.

You have an option to integrate E-junkie into your regular Drupal pages as widget code that is generated by E-junkie, OR you have the option, which we took, to create a new content type and do a little "finagling" to get the E-junkie product to display.

We created a new content type called "E-junkie item" and then changed the node template for that type of node so that it has a customized display of information for the mandatory "Add to Cart" and "View Cart" buttons.

For the display of merchandise itself, we simply created a View of all the available "E-junkie items" organized by ascending title.

Here's the code for how we integrated the unique E-junkie "id" to display the Add to Cart and View Cart button.

I recently worked on a Drupal 7 installation with a custom node.tpl.php template for the Event Calendar. 

What I wanted to do was add a quicklink where the event details could be easily posted to a user's Google Calendar. 

To do so, in the node-event.tpl.php file, I first identified all the variables available to the node using the

<?php print_r($node); ?>

This helped identify all the variables, including the location fields and date fields.

I then created some code to parse the event date field into a format that Google Calendars can understand using the explode and preg_replace PHP commands.

What this does is convert a regular date entry like 2012-08-31 17:30:00 into this string:  20120831T003000Z.

Google uses the following format:

<http://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&dates=STARTDATE/ENDDATE&text=TITLE_OF_EVENT&details=DETAILS_OF_EVENT&location=LOCATION_OF_EVENT>

where, in my template, I pulled out the variables as follows:

START_DATE= $node->field_date_of_event['und']['0']['value'];
END_DATE= $node->field_date_of_event['und']['0']['value2'];

When you click on the icon, it brings you to Google Calendar where you can then save the calendar item to your own calendar.

With many of our websites, there is a desire to balance load time against the importance of displaying updated content.

We recommend a simple "cache" mechanism for your most commonly-used views and blocks, so that a version of the content for that section is held in memory and served to specific types of users.

For example, you can offer a cached version of the view for anonymous and authenticated visitors, whereas the administrator coming to the site will always see the most updated item.

Cacheing within Drupal views comes in time-based increments:

• Never
• 1 minute
• 5 minutes
• 30 minutes
• 1 hour
• 6 hours
• 6 days

Depending on your needs, you can offer a cached version of your site to allow your site visitors to have a speedier download. In our own properties, we've put a cache of up to 6 days on front page information to allow editors the chance to "vet" the content before it goes live.