Oh yes, I went there, 2nd post and already I'm using bad puns.
Recently I've been working on a page of stats for a web committee, with the aim of it being presented to directorate level staff. At first, this seemed like a simple task, I've been knocking together web stats for years, on social media, e-commerce, web analytics, the lot. However, previously it was either for tech or marketing people like myself, or for a statistics-junkie manager who was very specific about what stats he wanted, I just had to provide them. So being presented with the task of providing a "dashboard for people" who knew they wanted something, but didnt know enough about the tech to know exactly what they wanted, or how it should be presented, was a challenge.
The main concerns here are, what level shall I pitch this at? These are clever people, and responsible for the direction of a university, so require all the information relevant to that process, but they aren't marketers or web managers so bounce, reach and sentiment ratio don't mean much to them. Pitch it too high, and the data will be meaningless, too low, and the the data will be useless.
I did this in my head for about 3 months and 4 dashboard drafts. It took 3 things to shake me out of this:
1. Reminding myself that "I" knew what it all meant, and so I was best qualified to make the decision of what was left in. If I felt it was important, and it was actionable, it needed to go in.
2. These things evolve, I could create a first version, with a little bit of commentary explaining each stat what WHY it was important.
3. I'm lucky enough to work in the same office as a market researcher - she's used to distilling an avalanche of stats and I asked her to take a look over it - she merely confirmed everything I suspected - this chart was too much, this should have more detail, this should go in etc. It reaffirmed point 1, but it was still good to have someone to ask.
So, why haven't I just thrown up my dashboard as a template, and skipped all this? Because my dashboard looks at stats that are important to my institution, and if I give you that template, you're never going to learn rule number 1.
Trust yourself. You're in the job for a reason.
Oh... go on then... here's some links to some article that may help - there are hundreds of articles on social media ROI now as businesses wake up to the fact that it's no longer just a matter of ticking a box, its potentially the most powerful and certainly the most cost effective means of marketing out there.
http://www.1updigital.com/blog/5-rules-for-the-perfect-web-analytics-dashboard.html
http://mashable.com/2010/01/26/maturation-social-media-roi/
And finally, my dashboard had to cover site analytics and social media metrics - these are two different topics, don't try and fit them on one big dashboard if you're required to do the same - to the untrained eye it will just be confusing. Next to each table & graph (use charts instead of numbers wherever appropriate) put a small commentary text box - giving your insight into the data - in the first to go to directorate I explained each stats succinctly - if it takes more than a sentence or two to exaplain it's importance, it's probably too complex to view. Also, I added some caveats "this is a snapshot" "this stat is prone to extreme fluctuation" "this will have been influenced by Clearing activity" etc.
Enjoy! My dashboard is far from finished, and will continue to evolve, so any tips you can share, post them here!
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