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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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Data on a Budget, Running Better Search Ads & New Help With GTM

One of my favorite shows, The Great British Baking Show, is back on Netflix. While watching this season, it struck me that host Paul Hollywood seemed to mostly give handshakes — a reward for a contestant’s top-quality baking — to men. Investigating this theory led me down a data rabbit hole.

First, I found Buzzfeed documenting all of Paul’s handshakes. But Buzzfeed wasn’t quite giving the whole picture because women tended to go father in the competition than their male counterpoints. Then, I found Wikipedia graphing how individual contestants performed. This would make it possible to chart the ratio of male/female handshakes for individual episodes! I had to cut myself off there, though (my husband wanted to finish the episode).

Although my current theory remains unproven, I was impressed by the data already available online. Do you have any theories you’ve been longing to prove?

Exploring Engagement Beyond “Likes”

This was such a great article to read, especially with the news of Instagram hiding “likes” swirling around. While measuring engagement is helpful for reporting purposes, it’s important to think about engagement as more than just “likes.” This article got me pondering the importance of looking at content as a whole package — rather than a single post or article — and how to quantify those important intangibles, such as thought provoking-ness.

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Data is Political, Non-Profit Benchmarks and Mapping TV Show Fans

In my experience, data is always political. There is power in having the numbers… and more in how you interpret them. But this week, the Trump administration flexed a frightening level of control over how data is shared with the public.

One Awful Week in Data (Politics)
On Monday, Washington Post covered White House press secretary Spicer’s avoidance of sharing a simple data point: the current unemployment rate. Then, the administration told the EPA and other federal agencies to stop talking to the press or posting on social media.  (A Badlands National Park employee responded by tweeting climate change data. #BadassBadlands)  Now, administration appointees are reviewing EPA data before it’s released to the public. I’m afraid for next week.

Who Needs Data When We Have “Alternative Facts”
Washington Post conducted their own experiment with aerial photos of the 2009 and 2017 inauguration crowds. I can’t recap it better than the reporter: “Even when the photographic evidence was directly in front of them and the question was straightforward, one in seven Trump supporters gave the clearly false answer.”

Inside the Industry
What’s Google Tag Manager, Anyway?
This blog post from analytics firm LunaMetrics does a great job of explaining what is Google Tag Manager and how it is used. (Hint: It’s not just the newest version of Google Analytics.)

Too Many Ads for Your Newsfeed. Let’s Move to Messenger
If you feel like your Facebook feed is all ads these days, Facebook’s with you. The social media giant is now testing ads in its mobile messaging app.

How Does Your Social Media Stack Up?
Clients often ask how their social presence compares other non-profit organizations. M+R’s annual benchmark study to the rescue.

Cool Visualization of the Week

Mapping the Culture Divide
Forget about the urban/rural divide. How about the Modern Family/Duck Dynasty divide? The New York Times mapped out the zip codes of Facebook users who “liked” certain TV shows, and they found top shows clustered into three groups with distinct geographic distributions. Awesome maps!