Check out the sample mobile analytics dashboard by Percent Mobile. It is like google analytics, but for mobile device based traffic. I liked the way they presented the information of website traffic that is coming from mobile devices.
What is WOW about it?
The top portion of the dashboard shows quick summary. This is one of the key principles of any good dashboard. Displaying summary at the top and providing detail at bottom. This creates a logical flow and viewer can decide for herself which details to seek.
The bar charts below are executed well. Often we are tempted to use colors and rich formatting, but when you use simple colors, then naturally the attention shifts from formatting to information. I like the way the charts look subtle but still provide good information, thanks to labels.
What can be improved in this chart?
The mobile ecosystem area of the dashboard looks good but it is difficult to spot any trends. Few things I can think of to improve this are,
- Reduce the number of phones displayed here to say Top 5
- Try something else like a tag cloud, but with images. It adds novelty and drives attention to most important devices.
- Restructure information by dimensions like touch-screen devices, gaming devices, good old mobile phones so that viewer will know what type of devices are visiting the site more.
What is your opinion on this dashboard?
Cool or awful? How would you improve it?
More on dashboards: KPI Dashboards using Excel (6 part tutorial and downloads), Excel Dashboards theory, principles and tutorials
[Hat tip to Digital Inspiration for percent mobile]
11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.