Build for the decision rather than the data. One or two numbers somebody would act on, delivered where they already look, beats a dashboard requiring a login and an interpretation.

Why they go unread

Not laziness, and not that the numbers are wrong.

A dashboard goes unread when opening it does not lead to a decision, which is the case for the overwhelming majority of them.

Fourteen charts present a great deal of information and no conclusion, so the reader has to do the interpretation themselves, every time, from scratch.

That is work, it produces no obvious action, and after three months of finding nothing it stops happening.

The problem is not that people will not read reports. It is that this report does not repay reading.

What makes one get read

The first is the largest single factor. A report requiring somebody to remember to log in somewhere is a report that will be read twice.

Build for the decision

The reframing that produces a useful report.

Start from the decisions actually made: whether to keep paying for something, whether a change worked, whether to be worried.

Then include only what informs those, which is usually two or three figures.

A chart nobody would act on differently at twenty percent higher or lower does not belong, however interesting it is.

That test removes most of a standard dashboard, and what remains is short enough to be read.

A worked example

A business receiving a live dashboard link from a supplier, updated continuously, with fourteen charts.

It had been opened perhaps five times in a year.

They replaced it with a short email sent quarterly containing four numbers, a sentence on what changed, and a sentence on what was done about it.

It was read every time, by the owner and by one other person.

Within two quarters it had produced two decisions, which the dashboard had never done despite containing all the same information.

The data had never been the problem at all. The delivery and the framing were.

Charts against numbers

A presentation question that decides whether a report is scanned or read.

A chart is useful for showing a shape over time: whether something is rising, falling or flat across twelve months.

A number is better for a single value somebody needs to know, and a chart of one value is decoration.

Which means a monthly figure belongs in a sentence, and a twelve-month series belongs in a chart, and most reports do the reverse.

Live against periodic

A distinction worth making deliberately.

A live dashboard suits somebody monitoring something that changes hourly and requires intervention, which describes almost no small business.

A periodic summary suits somebody making decisions monthly or quarterly, which describes almost all of them.

Live also invites checking, which on small numbers means watching noise and reacting to it.

The exception is a breakage check, which should be frequent and is not a dashboard: a glance at whether traffic and enquiries are roughly normal, once a week, taking a minute.

The counter-case

Where a fuller dashboard is right.

An online shop with daily decisions about stock, pricing or advertising spend, where live data genuinely drives action.

A business spending substantially on advertising, where daily monitoring prevents money being wasted.

And anywhere somebody is employed to manage this, whose job is to watch the detail and report the summary upward.

In that last case the dashboard is a working tool for one person and the summary is what everybody else receives, which is the correct arrangement rather than a compromise.

The weekly glance

Separate from any report, and it is the one thing worth doing frequently.

Once a week, look at whether traffic and enquiries are roughly where they normally are. One minute, no interpretation.

The purpose is catching breakage: a form that stopped working, a site that went down, a tag that was removed during an update.

Those failures are silent and expensive, and a weekly glance catches them within days rather than within a quarter.

It is not analysis and it should not become analysis, because looking at small numbers weekly with an analytical eye produces reaction to noise.

Checking for a cliff, not for a trend, is the distinction that keeps it useful.

What to put in a one-page summary

Concretely, since the general advice is easy to agree with and hard to act on.

Enquiries this period, and the same period last year.

Where they came from, as reported by the people themselves.

Jobs won from them.

Anything spent, and on what.

Two sentences on what changed, and two on what was done or decided.

That fits on a page, takes twenty minutes to produce, and is the whole of what most small businesses need to run their marketing.

Who it is for changes what it contains

The question that is rarely asked and determines everything.

An owner deciding where to spend needs three numbers and a recommendation.

A supplier demonstrating their work needs to show what they did, and the owner still only reads the first page.

Somebody operating the marketing day to day needs the detail, and that is a working view rather than a report.

A single document trying to serve all three serves none of them, which is what most dashboards are attempting.

The workable arrangement is a detailed view for whoever operates it and a one-page summary for everybody else, with the summary written by a person rather than generated.

Automating it badly

A common trap worth naming.

Automated reports sent monthly are read for two months and then filtered, because an email arriving unchanged in shape with numbers that mostly did not move teaches the reader that it contains nothing.

Which is a worse outcome than sending nothing at all, since it establishes a habit of ignoring anything that arrives.

The part that cannot be automated is the two sentences saying what changed and what was done, and those are the part that makes it worth opening.

A fully automated report with no commentary is a dashboard delivered by email, with the same problem in a different envelope.

Fixing an unread one

  1. Ask when it was last opened.
  2. List the decisions anybody actually makes.
  3. Keep only what informs those.
  4. Send it rather than hosting it.
  5. Add two sentences of commentary.
  6. Make it quarterly unless something demands otherwise.

The first is the question nobody ever asks, and the answer usually settles whether the rest of the exercise is worth having at all.

What belongs in that summary is covered in a report your accountant would accept.

Frequently asked questions

Why do dashboards go unread?

Because opening one does not lead to a decision. Fourteen charts present information and no conclusion, so the reader does the interpretation every time.

What makes a report get read?

It arrives rather than requiring a login, is short enough to take in at once, says what changed, and contains something actionable at least sometimes.

How do I decide what to include?

Start from the decisions actually made, then include only what informs those. Anything nobody would act on differently at twenty percent higher does not belong.

Live or periodic?

Periodic for almost every small business. Live invites checking, which on small numbers means watching noise and reacting to it.

What goes in a one-page summary?

Enquiries this period and last year, where they came from, jobs won, spend, and two sentences each on what changed and what was done.

Can it be automated?

Partly. The commentary cannot, and it is the part that makes it worth opening. A fully automated report is a dashboard in a different envelope.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Dashboard last opened in March?

Ask what decision it was supposed to inform. Usually four numbers in an email does the job it never did.

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