Showerthought: I just spent 3 days trying to explain a simple analytics report to a client

I had this client, a local bakery in Denver, who kept asking for 'the numbers' on their social ads. I sent over the usual report with clicks, reach, and cost per result. They came back totally confused, asking what any of it meant for their actual sales. I realized I was just dumping data, not telling a story. So I spent the next three days remaking the whole thing. I turned it into a simple one-pager that linked ad spend directly to estimated foot traffic and pie sales, using plain language and a couple of charts. It took way longer than the hour I'd planned, but they finally got it. Has anyone else had to completely rebuild how they report data to make it stick for a small business owner?

3 comments

3 Comments

kim_hart73mo ago

Oh man, that's the worst part of the job!

adams.harper3mo ago

Actually @kim_hart7, the worst part is when you finish a huge task and then the client changes the whole plan. Like spending a week on a design they approved, only for them to say they want it totally different on Friday afternoon. That "start over from zero" feeling is way worse than any boring paperwork, lol.

wesley_fox921mo ago

Wait, did anyone else try to get fancy with the design at first? I did this exact thing for a coffee shop last year. They wanted to understand their Facebook ads for seasonal drinks. I spent a whole weekend crafting this beautiful dashboard with all these cool interactive graphs and color coded metrics. Big mistake. They just stared at it like I handed them a manual in a foreign language. Ended up printing out a simple paper chart with three markers: money spent, people who walked in, and cups of pumpkin spice latte sold. They LOVED that. Sometimes we overthink it and just need to KEEP IT DUMB simple for clients who don't live in data land.