How to improve Sales Statistics?

Question

Staffs can see Sales Statistics on their dashboard which allow them to see number of sales made per day. This is a weekly Statistic.

For example, on Tuesday Paul have 4 sales which has been "Completed" and 1 sale in currently in "Processing". Next to Tues field are the point field. It will turn green if they have met their target, 20 point or more.

What do you suggest to improve the layout/tables for better readability and any additional use features? I also like to add an option for monthly statistic somehow.

Edit: For 'better readability', I meant what the best way to show "Completed" and "Pending" sales per day as well as points. Like you see on the screenshot.. is there alternative way doing this?

Answer 1

Your table is very hard to follow, you're putting most of the visual encoding into stuff which isn't carrying data. Tufte's concept of data ink is useful here.

Because you've got so much non-data-ink it's very hard to scan your table and get a sense quickly of what the current state of play is.

If you're going to use color to encode information (green for good, red for bad), you need not to be also using it as a design element to visually separate bits of the table. You absolutely need not to be using the same color (green) in a data ink role as a "good" indicator on numbers, and also as a design-ink role to visually separate the labels row.

I'd suggest paring back the colours on the chart itself, and instead just use them to highlight good/bad data points. You can easily distinguish the labels row with a bottom-border, instead of using a colour and then confusing everything by also using that same colour as part of the data encoding.

The other thing that would massively improve your table would be to leave cells that have no data (i.e. cells for future dates) blank. It's currently hard to read because you've got all those red 0s for days that haven't happened yet. You could just leave those cells blank until filled, and everything would be much more readable.

Here's a quick picture showing how I'd improve your table:

There's probably something else you can do with the way you're splitting out your data: Having two numbers in the same cell is very rarely the right approach.

Unfortunately since I don't actually understand what these numbers represent, I can't guide you a better way to present them.

Answer 2

Inside Industrial software space their are Operators who's job is to manage "Alarms" for very large and small pieces of hardware (nuclear cooling to turning pumps on and off). They suffer from the similar behavior you're probably trying to achieve here, where as they are really trying to tune "signal" from "noise".

One technique is ASM which basically distils down to "abnormal situation management" and in UI terms it means really "show me the bad". The whole agenda here is to give the end users a thumbs down in a more prominent way than a thumbs up given in this case you want to tap into the "fear" instinct.

In the case you've presented I just ask the question "what's more important, good or bad?" (negative vs positive reinforcement)

Also have more fun with the actual days / timeline. Banding the days in alternate column styling would help break up the grouping but also tables/datagrids are the ELSE statement to "What does the user need to know" ...infographics or some kind of unique visual experience here also helps the user have the page connect the dots for them instead of making them connect the dots on what it means ...