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Minimalist Dashboards, Google Rolls Back COVID Rules & The Ban on Political Ads Post-Election

Simplify Your Analytics Dashboard

We’ve all heard the adage “less is more,” but does it apply to dashboards? According to Urs Boller in this blog from Web Analytics for Developers, the answer is yes. I often get requests to build complicated Google DataStudio dashboards, with pages of metrics and a detailed glossary. I worry these create the same issue that Urs describes: Users don’t understand what dashboards mean, so they avoid using them. Making things simple encourages people to actually use the information they have. If you’re curious about how to adopt a more minimalist approach, Urs recommends three steps: Focus on user behavior, use your stakeholders’ language, and create dashboard templates. “This creates an analytics foundation which is both easy to understand and immediately allows everybody in our organization to start using the data and take actions.” Thanks to Craig Scriber for sharing this with me.

The GTM Feature We’ve All Been Waiting For

There’s always been room for improvement when it comes to Google Tag Manager, but this new feature is pretty handy.  GTM has now introduced the ability to export part of a container into another! This is great if you want to um, borrow, a particularly clever piece of tracking you set up for another site but don’t want to move over every single tag and variable. Head over to this article from Simo Ahava to find out how the new feature works and get step-by-step instructions (with screenshots included!) about how to select only the items you want to export. I already know this is going to make my life much easier.

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My Favorite Advice & Data Viz of the Month

My Favorite Advice

How to Be Smart About Measuring Your Success.

After political pollsters failed to predict Trump’s 2016 election win, you might think that they have little to teach us nonprofit folks about metrics and measurement. Not true, says this article in PR Newswire. According to the author, at least, the Biden campaign has done an enviable job selecting metrics that actually correlate to campaign success – instead of simply being visible and easy to measure. How does that apply to your organization? Well, don’t let your boss talk you into padding your monthly metrics report with Twitter impressions and website page views. It’s easy to get caught up in vanity metrics and false cause fallacy’s instead of collecting and analyzing the data that truly matters. I realize it’s easier said than done, but your whole organization should be on the same page about what matters and how to measure it.  Without a clear metric for judging the success of outreach or fundraising, you end up grasping at assumptions and are unable to correctly measure whether you actually reached your goals.

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Was the Facebook Ads Boycott a Success, Your Guide to Google Analytics & New Charity Navigator Rating System

The Results Are In: Facebook Ads Boycott

One fact we can all agree on? The boycott was not successful. Not only did Facebook ad spend increase last month — from $3.78 million in June to $3.83 million in July — but the recommendation of changes from Stop Hate for Profit were largely unmet. Despite this, many big-name companies are done posturing and have returned to the platform to advertise (or never stopped advertising on other Facebook-owned platforms). Also, the majority of Facebook’s total ad revenue comes from small advertisers — a group that includes many nonprofits — and many didn’t feel they could afford to pause campaigns during the COVID crisis. This boycott gives us all a lot to think about.

A Move To Smaller, More Frequent Donations

Did you know the average donation in 2018 was $128? If you think that number seems high for current times, you’re not alone. There’s a new wave pushing to lower the bar for smaller donations as a way to expand your donor pool. Especially if your nonprofit is targeting Millennial and Gen Z donors, smaller, more frequent donations make giving more manageable. If you’re wondering how to implement this, a good place to start is to encourage donors to round-up their donations or “set up their own peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns” that typically garner a few dozen dollars for your cause.

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My Favorite Advice & Data Viz of the Month

My Favorite Advice

How to Get Donors Coming Back for More.

My first meeting back after summer vacation was a planning call for a client’s year-end campaign. Even though 2020 has us all feeling stuck in a never-ending nightmare time warp, year-end fundraising season is indeed quickly approaching. That means now is the perfect time to think about overhauling your donation page. You want potential donors to feel confident when making a gift to your organization and ensure the process is simple. What does that mean about how you set up your donation page? It doesn’t mean include more text, more images or more donate buttons. It means include text that aligns with your organization’s mission, an image that speaks to your value proposition and an easy-to-complete donation form. If you’re looking for recurring donations, make a monthly recurring donation the default choice. It will help your organization stand out since “most nonprofits that offered monthly donations did so as an optional step.” And if your nonprofit has a lengthy donation checkout process (and you want to find out where users are dropping off and how to prevent it), check out this article on setting up a Funnel Visualization report on Google Analytics.

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Anti-Racism in Data Viz’s, Charitable Giving & COVID-19 & Taxing Internet Ads

Anti-Racism in Data Visualizations

“Photos are powerful and important, but so is the data that illustrates the disparities in our country.” As someone who looks to data to find opportunities, make decisions, and see the bigger picture, I came to this same conclusion. This article explains why data visualizations of COVID-19 — but not the Black Lives Matter movement — are so prevalent in our news cycle right now. And data viz designer Amanda Makulec lists 5 questions to ask ourselves when thinking about how we “data people” play can play a key role in the current anti-racism movement.

The Work-from-Home Guide to Filtering Google Analytics

With many organizations working remotely, now is a great time to talk about how to filter your employees out of your Google Analytics. Why is this important? So they don’t skew your stats! Data is only helpful if it’s accurate. And if you’re curious which method to employ since Simo Ahava gave a few, here’s what he suggests: “the URL query parameter solution is simple, because optimally your users only need to do this once per browser.”

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