It’s that time.  Some of these events aren’t until October, but that’s ok.

1. InfoCamp on Oct. 10/11 2009! It’s in its 3rd year, and this year I fully intend to go. From what Rachel Elkington tells me, it might sell out this year, so you need to get tickets soon.  Find out more about this “unconference” on UX/IA/information here.
   

   InfoCamp design by Aaron Louie and Josh Walker

2. Baron Brewing is awesome. Not only are they making beers for the Pillager’s Pub (pirate-themed) in Greenwood, they also have this tiny taproom in South Park only open on Fridays from 4:30-8:30 that I must go back to pronto.
3. The band formerly known as Ladies and Gentleman but now known as The Head and the Heart, is having an art/music show on Sept. 27th at the Jewelbox Theatre.
4. Everyone raves about Fremont Oktoberfest, but I think I’ll skip that in favor of the less crowded Enumclaw Oktoberfest this year on Oct. 9th and 10th.
5. Web Analytics Wednesday is back on Oct. 7th at Cobalt. 3rd time’s the charm for me and hopefully ZAAZ will not have a conflicting party.
6. There is an excellent SEO and GA post on Yoast (unintentional rhyme), on how to set up a profile in Google Analytics just to track keyword positions–not just pages. At first it didn’t work for me, and then it did and I don’t know why. But still, its good to know versus the basic page info you get on Google Webmaster Tools.
7. Most importantly of all…today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  To celebrate, here is a pick-up line:

“That’s the finest pirate booty I’ve ever laid eyes on.“

Otherwise, UW beat USC and Cal beat Minnesota!  I spent all day trying to re-educate myself on SEO and figuring out how to insert an Excel scorecard into the body of an email and not have it look janky. It took way too long to get a workable solution for that.

The reason I keep posting about data visualization is not just because I think these things are pretty or interesting, but I think the things you learn about data visualization are directly applicable to reporting in web analytics. People are always decrying the “data puke”, and I’ve seen scorecards that range from Windows 95 looking spreadsheet to graphic designer Excel masterpiece. I am hoping to end up somewhere in the happy medium, where you marry design with data in a way that it helps show the reader what is important and what is actionable.

Definition: A scorecard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives, consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance. Unlike dashboards that display actual values of metrics, scorecards typically display the gap between actual and target values for a smaller number of key performance indicators.

I don’t think Excel was originally envisioned as an application where form matters as much as function, but I’m trying to learn how to manipulate spreadsheets to make them look more attractive. I haven’t found many resources yet on how to do this, but already I see parallels to web design/graphic design. A scorecard is a visual presentation similar to a page in a magazine or a book–maybe it would be useful to take a page from that field and create mock-ups/wireframes in Adobe InDesign or Illustrator before you just start throwing data in?

This would require taking the time to learn the program (which is not going to happen for most), but I do think its worth thinking about it from a designer or information architect’s point of view. For instance, how do people read things online? They scan web pages in a F-format generally, put the most important things along that F shape if you’re sending an online copy of the scorecard. Maybe its too much effort put into something that you just have to get done and not fixate on design, but the designer in me thinks that creating a well-designed scorecard and consciously thinking about how the audience will read it (user-centered design), might help the client understand and agree with you.

I think Shane Atchison might disagree slightly with me. Am I completely right/wrong? Let me know.

I guess I was feeling too web analytically inclined lately because I have been only reading about IA/UX stuff now.  There was an interesting research posting by ClickTale, that studied how users scroll and whether or not they are actually reading things below the fold.  There are 2 parts to the study, but part 2 is where they give substantial conclusions and advice.

Turns out people do scroll. Go figure. Its relative to the position in the page though, and people’s attention span drops dramatically after the top until they get to the footer, which they pay close attention to. Here are the main recommendations:

• The most valuable web page real-estate is located near the page top, between 0 and 800 pixels. Visitor Attention and Page Exposure peak at about the 540 pixel-line.
• If you have a long web page,  add “stop points” such as headers and images to prevent your visitors from quickly scrolling down the page. It will prevent their attention from waning towards the end of the page.
• The footer of your page is important! Users do pay quite a bit of attention to that area of your page.

This is interesting to me because the primary argument of a person sitting in on a redesign meeting at the Burke was that no one will ever look below the fold, so they asked me to make a different mock-up reflecting that.  While I think the most important/engaging content should remain above the fold, it turned a content-rich page into something that does not have much content because of the design restrictions imposed. You can see an earlier mock-up in the portfolio section, but I was undecided on whether this was a better alternative or not. I would post the new mock-up but I don’t know if that’s allowed yet.

Uber complicated graph from ClickTale

And if anyone is in the market for an amazing smelling candle, I bought the Aloha Orchid one from Anthropologie. Very nice. And all the millions of people who decided to make identical Excel macro tutorials need to stop.

I think its only appropriate that in honor of my father, an accountant, that I spent the day BBQ-ing and playing with Excel.  Apparently in web analytics, reporting tools gather the data, but you manipulate or “do cool stuff” with it in Excel.  So I now know way more than I ever thought I needed to about PivotTables and such (which will come in handy at ZAAZ). Excel 2007 does seem to make it pretty easy to do all of the basic things like calculating sums, but I have a sneaking feeling that I will be doing more complicated things than this.

I should probably be focusing equally on data visualization (i.e. charts and graphs), because that’s how I’ll be getting my point across to clients.  Avinash Kaushik says that the best visualizations come from:

“1) a deep understanding of the goal / objectives 2) from thinking beyond what standard trend lines or stacked bar graphs can provide.”

I tried to emphasize my points in my last 2 web analytics reports for the Burke through varied and clear charts and graphs, but I haven’t gotten feedback yet on those.  I think the challenge is in making the numbers tangible without inducing death by bar graph. I tend to understand things better through words, so it requires creative thinking for me to not rely on rhetoric.

First day of summer in Seattle.