Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Defining a Dashboard
before we move forward, let's agree on exactly what a dashboard is. i like stephen
Few's definition as provided in his book,
Information Dashboard Design: The Effec-
tive Visual Communication of Data
(o'reilly Media, inc., 2006).
Dashboard
A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more
objectives, consolidated and arranged on a single screen so you can monitor the information at a
glance.
by this definition, Yahoo! Web analytics dashboards are not entirely where they
are supposed to be.
in my blog i went through the dashboard features and functionality of the three
free web analytics vendors: Yahoo!, google, and Microsoft. Check the following post
if you want to look into alternatives:
http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2008/09/google-microsoft-yahoo-web-analytics-
dashboards.html
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in the post i conclude that google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! Web analytics dash-
boards are, at worst, just a report collage, and, at best, an aspiring opportunity for end
users to have an easy ascent toward true dashboards. Yahoo! provides the best flex-
ibility as to what data to show and how to visualize it, but google provides, through
their solution, the best understanding of how to visually communicate quantitative
data. The Microsoft dashboard lacks both data flexibility and good understanding
of data visualization. This leaves us with the question of whether these web analytics
tools should even consider themselves dashboard tools at this point or if they should
acknowledge that they are meant for report collages.
What distinguishes a dashboard from a report collage? Dashboards focus on
the KPis that drive your business and nothing else. Figure 9.1 shows an example of a
Yahoo! Web analytics dashboard. notice how much information it includes. Do you
think it is a good at-a-glance tool?
My critique of the Yahoo! Web analytics dashboard as a report collage is not
meant to discourage you from using it; my purpose is for you to demand more and take
great pride in the dashboard that you build and for you to truly bend the technology as
much as you can. Most important, make sure that you do not fall into the easy trap of
just creating a report collage and convincing yourself it is a dashboard.
