If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. For more frequent updates, follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

When you hand an analytics report to your manager do you get that deer-in-the-headlights
stare?

Trust me, your reports don’t need to be complicated to be useful.

Most managers would prefer a bulleted list of the 5 things they need to do next.
Put all of your statistical jargon and pretty charts on another page.

1. Statistical jargon will confuse most managers and executives.

These people aren’t statisticians or computer geeks. They don’t care that
the frequency distribution was skewed .064 to the left.

2. Pretty charts are a crutch for people who don’t know how to convey actionable
insights.

If you show your manager a chart with no explanation, you’re just wasting time.
If you can’t read the chart and provide an action to take, there’s little chance
your manager is going to invest enough time to figure it out.

3. Above all, make sure the information is actionable.

In general, your manager isn’t going to read your analysis in bed with cookies and
milk. You’re not writing for entertainment, so leave out the fluff.
If a sentence isn’t telling me what to do, then it’s fluff. Delete!

Now, what should you put in your analysis?

Look for information that will help your manager do any of the items below:

1. Save money

2. Increase Traffic

3. Increase Conversion Rate

4. Increase Advertising ROI

5. Decrease Bounce Rate

Writing reports for managers is actually very simple. This is your chance
to tell THEM what to do. Use it!

- Jason Green

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 2:53 pm in Analytics.