Much Work About Nothing. When the automated dashboard is missing crucial information.

I was helping an online jewelry store owner with her business analysis when I first experienced this issue. I was amazed that such a significant oversight could exist in an automated tool.

She was learning how to check the automatic dashboard her shop website's host provided. We were in the middle of checking numbers for her customer's journey, matching steps with how many people interacted with the interface of each step: how many people showed interest in her social media, how many clicked on the links, how many arrived on the landing page, how many found the online shop page, etc.

When we checked the landing page and shop numbers, it was clear that there was no filter for people arriving from specific social media platforms. 45% of the people arriving on her landing page moved to her online shop, but there was no way of knowing if all of them came from one of the social media channels or all of them.

We were wasting our time.

It's pointless to know how many people visited the online shop or how many bought anything if we don't know where they came from.

Imagine we had learned all the customers came from one of the four platforms she was using, or whether one social media channel was performing strongly compared to the others. This would have been extremely useful information for building on.

Instead, we got a percentage of the total visitors.

Far less interesting.

This is not an isolated issue.

It's clear that the story the dashboard tells lacks crucial information.

Automatized dashboards without AI are standard for everyone. They are simply not designed to work perfectly. Everyone needs to tinker with them a bit. If you want to get the most out of your dashboard, you need to know what you're doing.

AI dashboards are effective if you ask them what you want. If you don't know what you want, it's your good luck that the AI figures it out by itself.

Employ critical and analytical thinking to identify your needs or discern any gaps in the information the automated dashboard provides.

Knowledge and effort are essential. You need to know the percentage of Instagram users who are buying your products. It's time to decide if your current strategy on IG is working or if you need to make a change.

You can have the answers you seek.

If you ask.

You have to know what to ask.

The choice is yours.

You can choose to learn what to ask.

Here is a first step.