New project on the horizon: A membership site for folks who are planning a Disney World vacation but are overwhelmed by other web resources. I’m using Drupal, which you know is my favorite content management system. And for this project I’m using the Ubercart module for the first time.

(By the way, I am finally comfortable using Drupal 5. I had postponed converting from 4.7 because you have to edit the templates by hand, but I’ve gotten used to it. And I gave a go at using the eCommerce module, but there were conflicts with other modules I am using.)

Ubercart is very impressive and PayPal certified. It includes two features that will make the new membership site really shine. First, role upgrades… The membership site will feature a free, basic membership. Members can then upgrade by purchasing a “deluxe” membership. (Warning: Technical Drupal talk coming up…) When a member joins, s/he is assigned the Value role in the Drupal database. When a Value member purchases an upgrade, Ubercart automatically promotes them to the Deluxe role… which has more privileges to access more content on the site. Very cool!

Second, file download protection. In addition to selling memberships, Ubercart also handles downloadable products. Deluxe members will have access to some downloads. But everyone can purchase other downloads. I’m very impressed with the shopping cart blocks and how well Ubercart integrates with Drupal.

What’s even better is that the Ubercart developers have provided comprehensive instructions for installation and set-up. The User’s Guide is one of the best I’ve seen for open-source web software. In fact, the Ubercart website is an excellent example of a Drupal site… beautiful theme, user-friendly navigation, nice use of community features such as private messaging and user points.

So the new membership site is taking shape quite nicely. Look for an alpha release in the next couple of weeks!

I’ve been reading a lot of Seth Godin’s blog these days. For all of the talk about new trends in marketing, especially Internet marketing, Seth’s messages provide a consistent foundation that is becoming more and more helpful to me… which is why what I’m going to say next may sound odd.

I think Seth missed a key point in today’s blog posting titled “Is viral marketing the same as word of mouth?”

While I’m hardly qualified to disagree with Seth, I think he omitted why word of mouth and viral marketing are different. Seth says:

Word of mouth is a decaying function. A marketer does something and a consumer tells five or ten friends. And that’s it. It amplifies the marketing action and then fades, usually quickly. … Viral marketing is a compounding function. A marketer does something and then a consumer tells five or ten people. Then then they tell five or ten people. And it repeats. And grows and grows. Like a virus spreading through a population. The marketer doesn’t have to actually do anything else. (They can help by making it easier for the word to spread, but in the classic examples, the marketer is out of the loop.)

I think that Seth missed a great opportunity to explain more about how the marketer can make it easier for the word to spread. A virus spreads because it has a built-in mechanism to replicate itself…. Consider the cold virus or the inimitable computer virus. A good portion of its energy is spent on replicating itself, ensuring that it will live another generation.

If you are a marketer hoping to create an idea virus, you must include some mechanism that helps the idea spread. You can’t just “do something” and expect the word to spread. That “something” must make it so easy, so enticing, so satisfying for the audience to spread the idea that they can’t help it.

Think about YouTube. They could have just set up a video viewing service with the traditional “tell a friend” button, what many sites depend on to generate word-of-mouth sharing. Visitors would have posted videos, and other visitors could have viewed the videos, then told their friends about the cool video that they saw by clicking on the “tell a friend” button…. But that wouldn’t have been nearly as effective as what YouTube actually did.

YouTube set up their service with the video hosting and the “tell a friend” button … and they added a feature that is so easy, so exciting that visitors can’t help but spread the word. They allow their videos to appear on other websites… and they make it easy.

Have people just told other people about YouTube and the awesome videos? Yes. But that’s not what created the hottest property on the Internet. That happened because YouTube included a mechanism… the viral component… that made it easy to spread their concept.

So that’s what I think is missing from Seth’s post. I’m looking for examples of viral marketing… idea viruses, if you will… that have been successful for smaller, start-up businesses. Share your link by leaving a comment. Yeah, leaving a comment is a little old fashioned… maybe you can help me find a better way.

The readers on Wil Wheaton’s blog are an amazing lot. Trolling around the site today, I came across a link to this terrific article analyzing the Star Trek “red shirt phenomenon.” So what does Star Trek have to do with marketing?

Matt Bailey, found of SiteLogic, walks us through his analysis. Here’s his introduction…

In my seminars, I enjoy teaching analytics because the fun is in finding effective and memorable methods to help people understand the concepts. One of my favorites is an analysis of the Red-Shirt Phenomenon in Star Trek.

What? You don’t know about the Red Shirt Phenomenon? Well, as any die-hard Trekkie knows, if you are wearing a red shirt and beam to the planet with Captain Kirk, you’re gonna die. That’s the common thinking, but I decided to put this to the test. After all, I hadn’t seen any definitive proof; it’s just what people said. (Remind you of your current web analytics strategy?)

As a die-hard Star Trek fan, I found the analysis interesting… But what matters more is how Matt looks at the data from many different angles. He looks at the data objectively and digs through the episodes to uncover unexpected connections. And his conclusion is fun to read, even if it isn’t exactly helpful to the Red Shirts.

Anyway, my point is this…

• It’s easy to make assumptions about what works and what doesn’t work.
• Our gut feeling may be right, but we’ll never know if we don’t measure.
• Turn the data inside out… Keep looking for connections.
• The data might be leading us in the right direction… but we have to careful not to be sidetracked or infer cause-and-effect relationships that aren’t correct.

I’m working on doing a better analysis of my tracking data. I would love to hear what tracking analytics program you’re using and how you are using the data…