I Make Data Sexy
By popular demand, I’ve created a video walk through of how to create and customize pivot tables. If you haven’t use pivot tables, they are especially useful in large data dumps exports, such as those you get from analytics applications like Google Analytics, Screaming Frog exports, and link reports (e.g., Open Site Explorer, Majestic, and [...]
Last week I wasted an entire afternoon because of an errant bug in my Excel that prohibited me from being able to use Excel’s Paste Special dialog. When I’d select Paste Special, I’d get this useless menu: After reinstalling Microsoft Office, I was dismayed to find out the bug was still there. Turns out the [...]
As I promised in my last video, in this video I take the bar chart and transform it into a sexy, double-sided bar charta la … #ooolalaaa I first tried one of these with Tori Cushing, when we were charting out tweets vs. Facebook likes for a client, and it was love at first sight. [...]
An issue I see a LOT in data visualization is choosing the wrong chart for the job. Personally, I have a strong affinity for the [vertical] column chart because I can combine metrics that can’t usually be combined using combination charts. (I’ll do a video on how to create one of those soon.) However, column [...]
I’m a huge fan of annotations in Google Analytics (GA). But I’ve only come across two clients who have used the effectively. Yes, TWO. Why To Use Annotations It’s important to note anything that has either a positive or negative effect on your site’s traffic. For example, let’s say someone in your organization decides to [...]
It’s safe to assume most people know how to create links in Excel that point to Web pages. Personally, I prefer to use the shortcut Ctr-K (Mac: Command-K), but you can also choose Hyperlink from the contextual menu. (Select the text or object and right-click it to get the contextual menu.) However, Excel also offers [...]
One nice option you have in Excel is the ability to drag series values down, saving you the time of entering individual values for well-known lists. Here are a few data types you can drag to auto increment: numbers years months day of week date time To take advantage of this shortcut, just add your [...]
I might be alone in this, but I hate seeing hyphens in lieu of 0′s in tables and charts. Here’s what it looks like: To change these dashes to 0′s select either the column or axis and press Ctrl/Command-1 to open formatting options. The formula, if you will follows this structure: Positive; Negative; Zero; [...]
One annoying idiosyncrasy of pivot tables is that all of the headings are prepended with a label indicating how the data is summarized. The most common one you’ll see is “Sum of” [original heading], although “Count of” is the default with non-numerical values. When you combine that with the wonky labeling the Google Analytics API [...]
One annoyance with using the Google Analytics API is that it doesn’t format percentages correctly. Instead of coming in as fractions that you just format as a percentage, they export as whole numbers. Sure, you could create a new column next to your data where you divide the number by 100 and then format as [...]
But enough about me ...
My renewed goal in this blog is to provide marketers with bite-size tips, strategies, tricks, and warnings in the pursuit of gathering and visualizing data. Basically, I ask myself, "Could this possibly make a marketer's job easier? If so, could it be digested in 5 minutes max?" If the answer to both those questions is yes, I go for it.
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