Barty’s Weblog

One of the great advantages of being an online business is that we have access to bucket-loads of business data. As an online store we’re able to track things like daily sales, hourly sales, hourly shipped orders, orders still to be picked, stock on hand, etc all on the fly… in real time.

But one of the downsides of real-time is that the excess data can create an addiction to the F5 key. It’s easy to become a little too obsessed with refreshing key statistics to see how the current hour is tracking.

We’re finding that too much real-time data can be distracting. The “F5 addiction” can develop to the point where observing the data serves no real decision-making purpose… other than satisfying some curiosity.

If data is not going to be used to help make good business decisions then does it really need to be viewed at all? Lately, we’ve started reducing our real-time reporting in an effort to reduce data distractions.  While its nice to be in touch, knowing how hourly sales are tracking is actually not very useful!

Is real-time data too fast? I think it often can be, and as an online businesses, we need to be careful we don’t swamp ourselves with valueless data. Yet another lesson learned…