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Recently I was tasked with making the statistical reports of the digital team interesting to the rest of the organisation and, in turn, getting others interested in the potential that digital has to offer.

I knew that the last thing anyone needs in their inbox was another report (I've worked in enough places where I recieved multiple reports each day (that I find myself just skim-reading) to know that most people will never read these documents). I wanted to create a report people would actually look forward to receiving and could quickly and easily absorb.

1. Reporting In Pictures.

Choosing to avoid lengthy reports featuring technical jargon, tables filled with (seemingly meaningless) numbers and endless amounts of pie charts, the new report was to focus on quick and easy to understand visualisations of the information.

2. Succinct Explainations.

I'm not going to pretend a statistical report doesn't have any numbers - clear it does - but these have been kept to an absolute minimum. The idea being that the reader can, at a glance, see if x is performing better than it was last month / year.

On a (slightly) deeper level 'What This Means' sections of text have also been included on each page. These are a paragraph long at most and describe what the changes in CTRs and New v Returning Visitors (for instance) mean in real terms.

3. The Result?

Judge for yourself by the results below... all quotes from senior management:

"really interesting stuff and clearly showing trends..."

"The 'What this Means' sections are spot on..."

"Really interesting stats"

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