Alexa turns up the geek-value of its charts

Am I the only one to be a little confused over Alexa’s recent changes in the way they present their site view results?

At face value there’s no real difference.

Old

New

What has changed is the y axis.

No longer does is say “Daily Page Views (per million)" but "Daily Page Views (percent)".

This confused the hell out of me at first but I think I understand why they did it. Isn’t it easy to assume, looking at the first, that this graph shows an average of 12 million page views per day?

You certainly couldn’t make that mistake with the new parameter. The problem is, this number, while extremely accurate, makes any kind of presentation particularly taxing on client attention.

"Michael, Just what is this number a percent of and why...?"

Looking at them now you can’t go wrong (and I know I have in the past). It’s just that when showing a client relative values, it helps to have a competitor (or five) to compare them against.

Otherwise you might as well save yourself the trouble.

Bring on the changes

There are moments when you look up, notice the time and make some quick realizations.

I’m not talking about life-changing inspirational realizations but that sudden computation that triggers your brain into realizing that you haven’t eaten lunch and it’s nearly dinner time.

I guess that’s what happens when you’re out of the groove. Or at least it certainly appears to be that way for those of us trying to get out of theirs.

Free time becomes time spent planning, creating, writing, re-writing and, occasionally, eating.

I have listened to Rich Schefren tell me that I have to get out of my own way but unfortunately, when you’re at the beginning of whatever enterprise you’re trying to build, the plain and simple truth is that you are very much in charge of everything.

That doesn’t mean you should give up, but excuses are easy to find as you’ve got a million things to do and quite literally an excuse for each of them.

I just knuckled down and got on with it. I planned, I wrote and re-wrote and after six months (yes that long) had no fewer than 3 presentations ready to propose yesterday.

Like most “creatives” the fun lies in pondering over the details and the really, dirty, grubby part comes when you have to “sell” your phantasmagorical idea to someone with less than 1% of your super-human “vision”.

That moment for me came yesterday and was, effectively, the first day of the rest of my career. Dirty, exhausting and most definitely uphill but well worth the effort.