How will featured listings on the marketplace work?

Linking this from the Redesign project #661566: Meta issue for Drupal.org webmaster project because this issue was tagged 'drupal.org redesign'

This issue is more about the interpretation of the prototypes, so it belongs in the redesign issue queue. Once we figure out the difference between ads and featured listings, we can file an implementation issue in the appropriate project's queue.

We need to well-document the rules here. Above all else, featured listings must be relevant, they should match what filters are active in the page. This will not be in the initial launch to keep things simple.

Featured listings will most-likely be paid. Might be sponsorships, pay-per-impression, pay-per-click, or any other feature that can be done, but please keep it simple. What would provide good value to service providers who want extra visibility?

Since this does involve revenue, the end result is up to the Drupal Association. Community feedback is certainly welcome and will help show what might be of value.

Given the direction this is taking, I think the DA should consider hiring someone to take charge here. A part-time person could probably handle the administration of a paid job posting / featured job posting space, and they should be able to pay for the position a few times over with their work.

This is *not* job posting, it is featured listings on a page like https://infrastructure.drupal.org/drupal.org-style-guide/prototype/marke.... Jobs might be more-tightly integrated in the future; for now, #994230: Move job postings out of g.d.o is the place to talk.

The DA does have someone who will be making sure the day-to-day sales happen smoothly, "The Association is in the process of expanding its paid staff with new hires who will help provide support for DrupalCon event management as well as sales and sponsorship coordination." from http://association.drupal.org/node/704. A proper introduction will be coming at http://association.drupal.org/news.

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Some random thoughts...

Currently http://drupal.org/drupal-services is a community-vetted list of major contributors. That is great in terms of giving something big back to said contributors, as well as featuring (generally) high-quality freelancers and shops front and center.

However, this list is also problematic because:
a) Almost all of these folks, because they're universally awesome, are also usually booked for work into the forseeable future.
b) They also tend to charge a lot (or at least more than some of their lesser-known counter-parts)
c) It creates the overall picture that there are only a handful of Drupal service providing companies when in reality there are at least hundreds, if not thousands.
d) There is no easily-queryable geographical information around these companies which prevents easy "what's here in my area?" kind of querying.
e) There is no easily-queryable categorical information around these companies which prevents easy "I need someone who's good at CiviCRM..." kind of querying.

...all of which lead to the people who actually need Drupal services and support not being able to find good solutions.

https://infrastructure.drupal.org/drupal.org-style-guide/prototype/marke... addresses at least some of these problems. It's a much wider array of Drupal service providers, and has categorical breakdown which is great. However, we effectively lose the ability to designate "Community Approved" companies. I'd like to see this capability preserved. Maybe something like:

1) (simple way) A checkbox on the node that companies could apply for in the same way they do now, which would display a special badge on their node like "Major Community Contributor" (except, you know, snappier)

2) (complex way) We invent a method for people on d.o to "vote up" companies in the service provider directory, along with a comment as to why (to help mitigate scripted cheating). You'd be able to click a tab and see a list of people who think that company's awesome and why. I think major community contributors would naturally rise to the top in this sort of scenario, but it wouldn't prevent a small fry shop who does good work from showing some nice comments from past satisfied customers.

(Of course, this opens the door for "vote down" companies with nasty comments which i don't think we should facilitate, but not sure what everyone's thoughts are on that. There certainly are some horrible "Drupal shops" out there...)

Finally the big thing that page is missing is explicitly spelling out what "Featured" means. I assume it means they simply pay more to get their name in bright green, so we should indicate that it means exactly that and it's not a quality indicator of any kind.

Heh. A shorter, more on-topic version of above:

IMO, we should have two types of "Featured" listings in this section. Ones in green == paid (and denoted as such). Ones in blue == major community contributors (and denoted as such).

Some brain-storming...

Two types of "featured" listings:

(Obvious question here is "Well why would Acquia ever give us money for a featured listing then?" and... probably they wouldn't. :) So this might be a terrible idea.)

Special "icon" next to community contributors:

(Note that 2bits should have one of these too in "real life" but I needed something to contrast against. Also note that I ripped that icon off of google images, we likely want something real and actually designed. :P)

Inspecting these further, there's something going on in Cyrve's listing with a star icon. Is that implied "vote up" or "favoriting" functionality? Or is that the indicator for "major community contributor?" (Damn you, lack of alt attributes! :))

Another thought if we wanted to option a) above... offer a discount for companies/freelancers whose "Major community contributor" checkbox is checked? Hmmm.

Ok, anyway. I'll stop spamming this post now. Probably. ;)

@webchick- I find your suggestions in #13 to be a bit troubling. While it would be great for more companies to get listed, I think it's really dangerous to turn this into simply a "paid listing" service. First of all, while I agree that the issues of cost and insufficient developers are real and need to be dealt with, the biggest issue that I deal with on a regular basis is the number of snake oil firms that claim that they are "Drupal firms". Also, I think the marketplace should basically recognize the companies that are paying for the plumbing (i.e. those that contribute materially to the community), and unless we're talking about big #s for the ads here then I think paid advertising should still be left to companies that contribute in other ways as well. If we open up the d.o. marketplace to all regardless of contributions, then we are sending the message that contribution isn't necessary to be a part of the Drupal ecosystem/"business community", and that folks can just buy their way into the community.

Here's another way to think about it: the current listings provide more quality control than many/most of the other business listings I've seen. Why? Because the companies here have developers that have published code publicly and (have likely) been peer reviewed. That might seem like a small thing, but in my experience there's a direct correlation between a company that emphasizes publishing of code/community contributions and the quality of the sites they build. And so, in my eyes you are advocating using d.o. to advertise development shops who range from criminally incompetent to just plain stupid.

If more companies want to be listed on d.o., then let them contribute. If contributing companies want to be featured, then I'm fine with letting them pay for the privilege. I am not fine with being listed next to firms that have neither contributed nor published publicly.

Also, in regards to voting firms up or down, I think that's a terrible idea, as it would probably get gamed immediately and it leaves the decision making in the hands of "the masses" (e.g. anyone who registers on d.o.) rather than in the hands of "those in the know". (OTOH- there are currently far too few people in the community taking part in the vetting of firms for inclusion on that list, but that's a whole other issue...)

To be clear, I'm definitely in agreement that the marketplace cannot possibly go live unless it highlights in some special way the people and companies who make Drupal what it is. So the current approval process that requires firms to show what they've given to the project in order to get special cow powers would still be there, in my mind. #15 kicks around some possible ideas for highlighting these firms.

However, only listing those awesome companies and not all of the others does our community a huge disservice, IMO. First, it makes us appear to have a far less diverse ecosystem than we currently have which is a huge turn-off to evaluators. Secondly, it shuts out the new, relatively small-fry, but hard-working freelancers and firms who don't have capacity to contribute at the level of Acquia because they don't have outside funding or a huge client roster and are currently just trying to pay their bills. While there are definitely some snake-oil companies out there, there are far more who are not and it doesn't make sense to punish them because of some bad apples who we can deal with on a case-by-case basis. And finally, Lullabot doesn't do church or PTA Drupal sites. I'm guessing neither does Zivtech or anyone else listed in the current Services listing. But there are freelancers and companies out there who do, and the point of a richer marketplace section would be to help those clients and firms get together, not shut people with needs like that out in the cold.

Additionally, from a financials perspective, the Drupal Association really needs to diversify its revenue stream so that Drupalcon isn't our primary source of funding. It's extremely risky business. Paid ads in the marketplace is a no-brainer place to extract additional revenue. And I think that is fine as long as it's made extremely clear that these are paid ads and not an "official" endorsement of these firms in any way. Hence my changing the word "featured" to "paid".

So how exactly the firms who are the Zivtechs, the Acquias, the Lullabots get featured in the listings is definitely up for discussion. I gladly welcome better mockups. :) Maybe separate listing pages entirely for "gold star" companies? But in any case, I strongly believe we need to be more inclusive in our services listings going forward. Your point about openness not encouraging contribution as much is well-noted, so I greatly welcome ideas on how to mitigate that. My concern though is that to most people the selection process feels very arbitrary and "insider ball", so I'm not sure it encourages contribution as much as you might think.

And yes, up/down voting is probably indeed a terrible idea. Just trying to brainstorm since the topic is "How will featured listings work?" and that's one possible way.

@not_webchick-

However, only listing those awesome companies and not all of the others does our community a huge disservice, IMO.

Do you have some examples of companies not listed that are doing a disservice? How would the community be helped by them being able to get in via paying? Do you have examples of companies who you would not want to be listed?

First, it makes us appear to have a far less diverse ecosystem than we currently have which is a huge turn-off to evaluators.

I disagree that we appear to have a small ecosystem. I sell Drupal to all sorts of organizations, and the ecosystem is almost always one of the big reasons people are already choosing Drupal (I believe the WH listed it as one of their reasons as well). Turning off evaluators? As I see it we're turning on evaluators faster than we can service them.

Secondly, it shuts out the new, relatively small-fry, but hard-working freelancers and firms who don't have capacity to contribute at the level of Acquia because they don't have outside funding or a huge client roster and are currently just trying to pay their bills.

Actually, this is the exact opposite from the reality. In reality, small firms can use "sweat-equity" to get listed along side medium-to-large Drupal orgs. I was just such a small-fry, hard-working, freelancer 4 years ago, and contributing was the best and easiest way to "put myself out there" I could find. And now, as I've grown my business, that same spirit infects everything our growing company does. We need a healthy ecosystem, which means growing companies that support the overall goals of the project. Why cheapen it with $?

And finally, Lullabot doesn't do church or PTA Drupal sites. I'm guessing neither does Zivtech or anyone else listed in the current Services listing.

We do a good deal of work for small orgs (mostly pro-bono or local business we want to help), but I know for a fact that there are quite a few smaller dev shops already on that list. I think what you're getting at here is a need for better segmentation and search-ability of the list, neither of which has anything to do with paid listings, and both of which we're currently trying to address.

I strongly believe we need to be more inclusive in our services listings going forward. Your point about openness not encouraging contribution as much is well-noted, so I greatly welcome ideas on how to mitigate that. My concern though is that to most people the selection process feels very arbitrary and "insider ball", so I'm not sure it encourages contribution as much as you might think.

Well, you certainly know how I feel on this particular issue- I couldn't agree more that we need a much better method for accepting companies on this list. I have been trying to help out there, but it's still very difficult to get enough webmaster eyes on the requests, and there's no recourse for people who can't get enough attention. I personally think that this needs to be broken off from the webmasters and brought into its own project/issue queue, which could help by allowing people who aren't webmasters to help out more (I actually think all content and marketing decisions should be removed from the webmaster queue, but that's another issue).

I'd like to make a proposal to move this discussion forward.

The attached file shows a simple change to the existing marketplace preview which branches our "featured" listings to a separate tab from "all providers". Featured providers are all providers currently listed at /drupal-services.

This simple mockup allows those companies that contribute significantly to the project to have a featured listed and to be prominent in the listings while also providing a place for the hundreds of other organizations that provide Drupal services to be listed. It also provides them incentive to move forward to be listed on the featured listing by getting involved in the project. This is leverage to ensure that companies contribute code, documentation, run meetups, and really help to push the project forward.

My proposal is for the featured listed tab to be the default tab and for the sort order to be randomized. The filters at the top will drill down only into the selected tab. Filters will default to showing only featured companies and the user can select to choose to including "all" companies. I'd like to include a brief message as to why these companies are featured.

This proposal is to replace the existing /drupal-services with the marketplace-preview (as per the proposed mockup) and then remove marketplace-preview.

forgot to attach the file

@jredding, I think this is close to an acceptable solution, but I do have a couple of questions/concerns. First, I think that we should be calling the first tab "Contributing Companies", not "Featured", since the reason they are featured is bc of their contributions. Second, I think we need a description at the top of the Featured/Contributing Companies view that describes the difference btwn them and the "masses" along w a link to the instructions to get listed. Third, I think that Random is a very good idea for the front page, but I think further pages should be alphabetical (even including the ones already listed)- which puts us last, but whatever, that's my fault for not naming us AAAZivtech.

Overall I feel like this is a good way to go- thanks for unsticking it! I know there are a bunch of worthy companies stuck in the current queue that would be ecstatic about the change.

@alex_ua
Good catch with the "Contributing Companies" and the description was on the list. Want to take a stab at writing that description?

Gotcha on Random for the front page and them alphabetical pagination. My guess is that most people will be using the filters anyhow.

Solid proposal; I like it! However ... The mockup has 5 different ways to access the same listings (from the new user's POV).

I'm unclear whether the plan is to keep all of the tabs? I understand the hosting page is different as it contains paid listings, and is a definite landing page, but what about training? Is it necessary for this to be separate? If not, the tabs could be Contributing Companies, Hosting Providers, and All Providers

Also I realise the Hosting tab sets a precedent for having sub-tabs but I think Enterprise & Managed Platform as a Service links aren't very noticeable. This problem should be validated somehow. If it is, I have some ideas :)

@lisarex the hosting page is moving away from having tabs, you should see that change next week. Sub navigation (Shared hosting, Enterprise, and platforms) will be moved to a menu on the right side. I think over time we should evaluate if they even belong together.

I like that training is separate. When a customer is looking for training they explicitly look for training and when you're looking for a development company that is exactly what you are looking for.

The thing that is missing on this page, however, is a job board. Sometimes people aren't looking for a company to do their work but rather a freelancer. However, I do *not* want to fix that right now. I'm very focused on getting the marketplace up and running and to a point where we can refine it over time. In the perfect little world that exists in my head this marketplace will be launched before DrupalCon Denver.

Updated version of the Marketplace, including 2 types of service providers - featured and all, is live. I think this issue can be closed.