Central Perk: 17 iul. 2014

joi, 17 iulie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Phantom Liquidity and Perfect Pilfering
Did the Rebels Have a Buk System? How About a Working One? Flight Diverted Over Restricted Space?
Ukrainian Buk Air Defense System Allegedly Deployed Near Donetsk Yesterday; Questions Still Linger
Did Ukraine Shoot Down Passenger Plane? They Did Once Before: SA Flight 1812 Erroneously Downed by Ukraine in 2001
Malaysian BA 777 Passenger Jet Goes Down Over Ukraine, 295 Killed; Ukraine Blames Separatists Who Deny Responsibility

Posted: 17 Jul 2014 10:49 PM PDT

A friend of mind asked me to comment on the Nanex article Perfect Pilfering, a detailed exposé on how the market is rigged from a data-centric approach.

We received trade execution reports from an active trader who wanted to know why his large orders almost never completely filled, even when the amount of stock advertised exceeded the number of shares wanted. For example, if 25,000 shares were at the best offer, and he sent in a limit order at the best offer price for 20,000 shares, the trade would, more likely than not, come back partially filled. In some cases, more than half of the amount of stock advertised (quoted) would disappear immediately before his order arrived at the exchange. This was the case, even in deeply liquid stocks such as Ford Motor Co (symbol F, market cap: $70 Billion, NYSE DMM is Barclays). The trader sent us his trade execution reports, and we matched up his trades with our detailed consolidated quote and trade data to discover that the mechanism described in Michael Lewis's "Flash Boys" was alive and well on Wall Street.

The Setting

Let's take a look at what we found from analyzing 5 large trades executed at different times over a 4 minute period in Ford Motor Co. Before each of these trades, the activity in the stock was whisper quiet. Here's a chart showing millisecond by millisecond trade and quote counts in Ford leading up to one of these 5 trades:

You can clearly tell when the trade hits: activity explodes to over 80 quotes in 1 millisecond (this is equivalent to 80K messages/second as far as network/system latency goes). But the point here is that nothing was going on in this stock in the immediate period before this trade hits the market.

In this particular example, there were a total of 24,800 shares advertised for sale at $17.38 (all trades and offered liquidity will be at this same price) from 8 exchanges. The trader wanted 20,000 of these shares. What he got was only 12,133 shares and 600 of these were on a dark pool (which wasn't part of the 24,800 shares of liquidity on the lit exchanges)! Worse, someone ELSE was filled for 1,570 shares during these same milliseconds! Remember, nothing was happening in Ford until this order came into the market. Based on the other 4 examples, we are sure that no trades would have occurred during these few milliseconds of time if it wasn't for this trader's order.

What happened to the 24,800 shares offered and why couldn't he get at least 20,000 of them? How is it that others were able to get shares during this time? This is especially disturbing when you consider these other traders (HFT) only bought shares in reaction to the original trader's order.

Phantom Liquidity

Nanex goes on to discuss detailed analysis of the trade as well as "phantom liquidity". Recall that "liquidity" is the alleged benefit of HFT.

The article shows that order cancellations happen far faster than trade executions, and that is why the Ford trader wasn't able to get the advertised liquidity - the orders simply disappeared faster than exchanges processed his buy order.

Nanex concludes "If you believe that the industry can fix these problems on their own, then we believe you are no longer fit to regulate, because that is not, and never was, how Wall Street works. Honestly, a free for all, no–holds–barred environment would be better than the current system of complicated rules which are partially enforced, but only against some participants. And make no mistake, what is shown above is as close to automatic pilfering as one can get. It probably results in a few firms showing spectacular, perfect trading records; it definitely results in people believing the market is unfair and corrupt."

I agree with the conclusion, also noting that insider trading is allowed for members of Congress but no one else.

But did Namex really reveal anything? The answer is not really. There were spoof bids and offers in the markets long before the arrival of HFT.

Yet, things are undoubtedly worse today with more spoofs from fewer and fewer places. That is the only way some HFT systems can go for months or longer without reporting a single loss for even a day.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Did the Rebels Have a Buk System? How About a Working One? Flight Diverted Over Restricted Space?

Posted: 17 Jul 2014 09:12 PM PDT

People seem to have their minds made up on whether or not the plane was shot down and by whom.

The propaganda du jour is the separatists were responsible. By even discussing alternatives, ridiculous accusations have come in about "Mish" being a Russian name.

The first casualty in war is always the truth. Statements from both sides are suspect.

Here is another update from reader Jacob Dreizin, a US citizen who speaks Russian and reads Ukrainian, regarding whether or not the rebels had a Buk system.

Hi Mish,

I told you the rebels have never claimed a high-altitude air defense capability, and despite that "tweet" (which I believe is genuine), I stand by what I said: The rebels do not have a working Buk system.

Late last month, the Donetsk rebels took over a small military base that housed at least one "Buk" system. Immediately, Kiev announced that the captured equipment was not in working order. And that was the end of it.

The rebels never claimed to have deployed the system. In fact, they have stated many times that they have a modest air defense ceiling, and that Ukrainian planes have been trying to make their attacks from above that ceiling (not always successfully.) And the rebels have never claimed a high-altitude capability.

My guess still remains that the Ukrainians (unwittingly) repeated their Siberian Airlines stunt from 2001.

Questions Du Jour

Is Anyone Telling The Truth?
Were both Ukraine and the Rebels lying about Rebel possession of a working Buk system?

Missile Claims Deepen Escalation Fears

Please consider Missile Claims Deepen Escalation Fears

Little is yet known about who targeted Malaysian airlines jet MH17. But the destruction of an airliner at high altitude by a missile strike, as Kiev suggests, shows the conflict in eastern Ukraine has reached a new level in terms of military hardware and tactics.

To down a commercial plane flying at 10,000m requires a missile system of a sophistication until now regarded as well beyond the capabilities of pro-Russian separatists, raising the question of exactly what such a system might be, and more importantly, where it came from.

For weeks, the militia forces in the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk have been waging a highly successful ground-to-air missile campaign.

At least 10 Ukrainian military aircraft including Mi-24 and Mi-8 "Hind" helicopters, An-30 and An-26 transport planes and, last month, an IL-76 military transport carrying 49 troops have all been shot down this year.

So far, planes in eastern Ukraine have been hit with missiles launched from Manpad – shoulder-launched – systems, with a limited range of around 3,500m.

Around five hours before the crash of MH17 on Thursday, locals near the town of Grabovo, where wreckage of the flight is now scattered, spotted a Buk launcher.

Pinpointing where such a Buk launcher might have come from, is the hard part.

Both the Ukrainian and Russian military possess such systems. Kiev operates 60 Buk 9K37s, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Moscow operates 350, including a large number of more modern Buk 9K317s.

"It's a standard Soviet anti-aircraft system," says Igor Sutyagin, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and an expert in Russian military equipment and tactics. "We know that missile systems have been coming across the Russian border [in recent weeks], but this type of system falling into separatist hands is new."

The best evidence that has emerged so far is that the Buk launcher fell into rebel hands on June 29.

On that day, rebel forces took control of a base in the suburbs of Donetsk at which surface-to-air missile unit A1402 of the Ukrainian army was located.

A picture put up online shortly after the seizure by the rebel forces shows very clearly a Buk launcher in situ armed with four missiles.

It is impossible to directly verify whether the claim is genuine, but the picture – and many other references online from rebel groups to Buk systems being captured – have been removed in recent hours.

So, was the captured system working or not? If it was working, were both sides lying about it?

You-Tube Proof

ZeroHedge had a couple of interesting posts today. Here is the first: Ukraine Releases YouTube Clip "Proving" Rebels Shot Down Malaysian Flight MH-17.

If you read the article you will note that the You-Tube timestamps have been edited and it is not entirely clear who is even having the discussion that Kiev offers as "proof".

In short, there is no proof of anything other than someone is attempting to cover their tracks.

ZeroHedge concludes "The opinion of the world as to who is at fault here is most certainly very much made up by now anyway, and if it isn't, the "unbiased" media will certainly help, even it has nothing but repetitive soundbites and speculation presented as fact, in the coming days."

Also consider the ZeroHedge question Was Flight MH-17 Diverted Over Restricted Airspace?

My interpretation is a combination of maybe and no. The flight did take a mysterious path for reasons not yet reported or understood.

The Financial Times reports Downed Airliner was Travelling Above No-Fly Zone.

While the plane was not in restricted space, it was just above it, but perhaps on an unusual path. If so, why?

Conspiracy Theories

Clearly there is a cover-up conspiracy by someone. Whoever did it, knows they did it. I am willing to entertain the possibility that it could be either side, my position all along. I am not willing to accept the mainstream media position that the rebels are clearly to blame.

The fact remains that unless Kiev and the rebels are both telling the same lie, there is no reason to believe the Buk system captured by the rebels is in working order.

Finally, Ukraine accidentally shot down a civilian plane once before (see Did Ukraine Shoot Down Passenger Plane? They Did Once Before: SA Flight 1812 Erroneously Downed by Ukraine in 2001)

Ukraine denied it then. Why is it so inconceivable the same thing happened again?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Ukrainian Buk Air Defense System Allegedly Deployed Near Donetsk Yesterday; Questions Still Linger

Posted: 17 Jul 2014 01:43 PM PDT

A Russian news website claims Ukrainian Army Buk Missile Likely Downed Malaysian Plane.

A Ukrainian army battalion of Buk air defense systems was deployed near the city of Donetsk a day before the crash of a Malaysian passenger plane on Thursday, making the downing of the aircraft by one of the missiles highly probable, an expert source said.

"According to reconnaissance data, a Ukrainian army battalion of Buk air defense systems was deployed near Donetsk on Wednesday morning," the source said.

The source added that armed militia fighting Kiev-led forces in eastern Ukraine does not have Buk systems, which are capable of shooting down aircraft flying at altitudes up to 25 kilometers (82,000 feet).

Questions Still Linger

Do we know any more than we did hours ago? In spite of various claims and even an alleged admission by Ukraine rebels they did it, the answer is not really.

Foreign Policy Magazine discusses the situation in What We Know So Far About the Passenger Jet Allegedly Shot Down Over Ukraine.

A spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington declined to comment on charges that pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine shot down a Malaysian Airlines plane. "Why should we comment on allegations?" the official said. The spokesman did however point to an article published by the Russian news service RIA Novosti suggesting that the Ukrainian military shot down the aircraft, not the rebels.

The source in the article also raises doubts that pro-Russian rebels could've carried out the attack, claiming that the armed militia in eastern Ukraine "does not have Buk systems." Both the Ukrainians and pro-Russian rebels deny shooting down the passenger plane.

Following the plane's crash, the rebels denied having access to the Buk, but in recent weeks, there have been widespread reports of separatists acquiring the weapon, and possibly other surface-to-air missiles, as well. On June 29, the Russian newswire ITAR-TASS reported that rebels in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic had acquired Buk missiles. The group even tweeted about having acquired the weapons.

Crucially, the Ukrainian armed forces also have the Buk missile system, which gives Russia and its proxies a measure of plausible deniability if it is confirmed that a Buk was indeed responsible for downing the Malaysian jet. According to Patrick Megahan, a research associate for military affairs at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Ukrainian military has been operating Buks in the area near the crash-site, raising the possibility that Ukrainian forces made a mistake.

"It's a very capable system, proven under real-world conditions," Andrew Bowen, a columnist for The Interpreter and a researcher at the political risk consultancy Wikistrat, told Foreign Policy. It's also not an easy weapon to fire, and would require some training or prior knowledge to use it. "These systems require a large amount of technical know-how, unlike these MANPANDS, which are basically 'point-and-shoot,'" Bowen said.

Claims and Allegations

Rebel tweets claiming acquisition of a Buk system are not believable for two reasons.

Propaganda: In war all kinds of claims are made so the enemy does not know what to believe.
Was the tweet planted?

Similar questions arise over the assertion rebels claimed responsibility.

Did someone see a crash and take credit, not even knowing what happened?
Did anyone really make the claim or was it planted then removed from a rebel website?

Also see Did Ukraine Shoot Down Passenger Plane? They Did Once Before: SA Flight 1812 Erroneously Downed by Ukraine in 2001.

It is still entirely possible this was just a jet crash. But if the plane was shot down, then all things considered, Kiev seems more likely than rebels.

I am willing to reconsider as evidence comes in.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Did Ukraine Shoot Down Passenger Plane? They Did Once Before: SA Flight 1812 Erroneously Downed by Ukraine in 2001

Posted: 17 Jul 2014 10:37 AM PDT

Moments ago a Malaysian BA 777 Passenger Jet Crashed in Ukraine. 280 passengers and 15 crew were killed. The plane was at an altitude of about 33,000 feet.

According to the Financial Times Anatoly Geraschenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, said in a Facebook posting "Using a zenith-rocket Buk system, the terrorists just downed a passenger airline heading from Kuala-Lampur to Amsterdam".

How likely is that statement?

Reader Jacob Dreizin, a US citizen who speaks Russian and reads Ukrainian, just pinged me with this comment.

The rebels have never claimed to have an air defense system with that kind of altitude capability. Neither have they been known to have shot down any Ukrainian military aircraft flying above 6000 meters. So we are talking some heavy duty weaponry here.

The only other civilian airliner to have been shot down over Ukrainian airspace was the Siberian Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in 2001. Ultimately that was found to be the handiwork of a poorly-coordinated Ukrainian air defense exercise.

Kiev eventually paid out compensation to the victims' families. So I would not be too surprised if the Ukranians "did it again." But neither would I jump to conclusions.

Siberia Airlines Flight 1812

Please consider the fate of Siberia Airlines Flight 1812

Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 crashed over the Black Sea on 4 October 2001, en route from Tel Aviv, Israel to Novosibirsk, Russia. The plane, a Soviet-made Tupolev Tu-154, carried an estimated 66 passengers and 12 crew members. No one on board survived. The crash site is some 190 km west-southwest of the Black Sea resort of Sochi and 140 km north of the Turkish coastal town of Fatsa and 350 km east-southeast of Feodosiya, Ukraine.

Ukrainian military officials initially denied that their missile had brought down the plane. However, Ukrainian officials later admitted that it was indeed their military that shot down the airliner.

Did Ukraine Do It Again?

Like Jacob, I would not be surprised, especially given the rebels do not claim ownership of a missile system capable of hitting that altitude.

Repeating my earlier comments before I even heard from Jacob ... "I do not know who is responsible, but it sure seems Ukrainian officials jumped to conclusions, especially since this was the second disaster this year to hit Malaysian Airlines."

A shoulder fired missile cannot reach that altitude, but a Buk Missile System could.

From Wikipedia

The Buk missile system (Russian: "Бук"; beech, /bʊk/ BOOK) is a family of self-propelled, medium-range surface-to-air missile systems developed by the former Soviet Union and Russian Federation and designed to engage cruise missiles, smart bombs, fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles.

I am not stating Ukraine did this. I am merely asking a question, while pointing out the possibility, and noting they did it once before.

As of this moment, the rebels deny responsibility and never claimed ownership of medium range weapons capable of reaching that altitude.

Clarification From Jacob

The Ukrainians have previously claimed that one or perhaps two of their planes were shot down by the rebels at 6000 meters. To my knowledge, based on their various statements, the rebels have never admitted to shooting down anything over 2500 to 4000 meters (depending on who you listen to), nor have they boasted of that kind of capability.

Mish Comment: 4,000 meters is 13123.4 feet, a far cry from 33,000 feet altitude of passenger jets.

Update From Jacob

Another wrinkle: The Ukrainians had officially closed the airspace over Donetsk and Lugansk on July 8th. The airplane went down over this area.

Mish Comment: This is looking more and more like an "inside job" not the work of rebels or Russia as widely presumed. By "inside job" I mean either Ukraine or Malaysian pilot.

Update Two

Please see Ukrainian Buk Air Defense System Allegedly Deployed Near Donetsk Yesterday; Questions Still Linger

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Malaysian BA 777 Passenger Jet Goes Down Over Ukraine, 295 Killed; Ukraine Blames Separatists Who Deny Responsibility

Posted: 17 Jul 2014 09:43 AM PDT

A second disaster hit Malaysian Airlines today. Bloomberg reports a Boeing 777 crashed near the town of Torez in eastern Ukraine killing 280 passengers and 15 crew.

A Ukrainian Interior Ministry official was quick to point the finger, stating that pro-Russian separatists shot down the passenger jet. The self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic said it did not attack the airplane.

The Financial Times has a few more details.

A Malaysia Airlines passenger jet has crashed in Ukraine 60km from the border with Russia, ITAR-TASS news agency reported on Thursday.

The plane, a Boeing 777 with 295 people on board, was reported by Interfax news agency to be en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it came down before entering Russian airspace. Malaysian Airlines confirmed by Twitter that it had lost contact with flight MH17, the scheduled flight for that route.

The crash is the second disaster to hit the Malaysian carrier. Investigators have still not located the wreckage of MH370, which crashed on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The crash of MH17 immediately triggered claims that the aircraft had been shot down. The precise location of the crash was unclear.

The crash came hours after local officials accused Russia of downing a second army plane within days, and the stepping up the flow of arms and fresh rebels despite decisions by the US and EU to punish Moscow with a deeper economic sanctions.

Several Ukrainian aircraft have been shot down in the disputed areas of eastern Ukraine near to the border with Russia in recent months, including a Ukrainian Su-25 jet fighter on Thursday which Kiev claimed was downed by a Russian jet.

"Using a zenith-rocket Buk system, the terrorists just downed a passenger airline heading from Kuala-Lampur to Amsterdam," Anatoly Geraschenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, said in a Facebook posting.

Buk Missile

I do not know who is responsible, but it sure seems Ukrainian officials jumped to conclusions, especially since this was the second disaster this year to hit Malaysian Airlines.

A shoulder fired missile cannot reach that altitude, but a Buk Missile System could.

From Wikipedia

The Buk missile system (Russian: "Бук"; beech, /bʊk/ BOOK) is a family of self-propelled, medium-range surface-to-air missile systems developed by the former Soviet Union and Russian Federation and designed to engage cruise missiles, smart bombs, fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Damn Cool Pics

Father Asked Strangers To Photoshop A Picture Of His Daughter After She Passed Away

Posted: 17 Jul 2014 12:15 PM PDT

This one is tragic and touching. Nathan Steffel from Ohio asked strangers on Reddit to photoshop a photo of his 6-week-old daughter after she passed away. He wanted her medical tubing to be removed.

"Since she was in the hospital her whole life, we never were able to get a photo without all her tubes."

What Happens When You Drink Coffee [Infographic]

Posted: 17 Jul 2014 11:48 AM PDT

Are you a caffeine fiend who requires a cup of coffee each morning just to function? You're not alone, it's the world's most popular drink after water. Check out this infographic and learn just how that delicious brew is helping you out with its various benefits. And that part about withdrawals lasting between 2 and 9 days? Sounds like all the more reason to never stop drinking coffee!

Click on Image to Enlarge.

What Does Infrastructure Have to Do with Climate Change?

Featured

What Does Infrastructure Have to Do with Climate Change?

Rebuilding and strengthening our nation's roads and bridges isn't just a vital part of maintaining a world-class economy -- it's necessary to combat the impacts of climate change.

As extreme weather and increased flooding become more common, communities across the nation need more resilient infrastructure that can withstand the impacts of our changing climate. That's one of the reasons why President Obama established a task force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience last November, and why he met with them yesterday.

Watch the President's remarks and learn how the government is taking action to help our communities.

Building Better Content By Improving Upon Your Competitors

Posted: 16 Jul 2014 05:17 PM PDT

Posted by Bill.Sebald

In rock n' roll music, stealing is expected. Led Zepplin allegedly lifted from lots of earlier blues and folk artists. The famous I-IV-V chord progression of The Wild One's song "Wild Thing" was used only a couple years later on "Mony, Mony." My favorite example of musical larceny - "Let It Be" by The Beatles, "Farmhouse" by Phish, and "No Woman, No Cry" by Bob Marley are built around the exact same chord progression. Yet in all these cases, the songs were tweaked enough to stand on their own in meaning, served as distinct entities, and inspired unique feelings from the listener. Granted record company execs often disapproved, but some artists were often flattered to see interpretations of their riffs and progressions. At the end of the day, this is what spawned (and advanced) the rock music genre. Sometimes stealing is the engine of innovation.

"Your idea isn't new. Pick an idea; at least 50 other people have thought of it. Get over your stunning brilliance and realize that execution matters more." —Mark Fletcher of Bloglines.com.

In marketing, we don't just "steal" the minds of consumers, we sometimes steal - and interpret - from our competitors. Sometimes we're lazy about it, and sometimes we're perceived as originals. Remember one of the immutable laws of marketing - always appear to be first. Well then why not be first to make someone's content strategy more effective (for your own gain)?

Wait - so do I condone being a pickpocket, cat burglar, or politician? No. What I'm suggesting is reviewing what inspires you, analyzing why it was successful, and inspiring yourself to make something better. Better for us, better for our clients, and better for their customers.

Oh no; is this another "Content Is King" post?

I'm not a huge fan of that phrase anymore. SEO has gone through some serious developmental stages in its lifetime. Once the hype was all about "keyword density," then "anchor text," then "duplicate content;" now I feel like our latest bandwagon concept is the semi-vague "content is king."

These are certainly all valid concepts in SEO, but without proper context, they often fall short of sound advice. They become blind directives. So here we are in 2014, with many business executives nodding along, "yes - content is king. I've read that a trillion times. We need to crank out 100 posts a month. Go, go go..." But I think this is a problem. Now that SEO is mainstream, there's so much "good content" that the noise ceiling has simply been raised. I've said it before, "Fair-quality copy is becoming the new Google spam." I go into pitches now where businesses can't understand why their legacy content isn't getting searches. In other words, they ask why "content is king" isn't producing results. It's usually because content was treated as a homogeneous tactic where a marketing or SEO strategy wasn't put in place to link the pieces together.

I think it's time SEOs put that phrase to rest, and start thinking in terms of how a traditional content marketer would think about it. "Content that is unique in value, strong in expertise, provides a necessary point-of-view, and leads the pack in terms of usefulness is more than king - it's fundamental to success." A bit of a mouthful (and less sexy), not to mention harder to develop, but it really needs to be adopted.

So if you would, please keep that in mind during this post. Continue on!

What are your competitors doing?

Content ideas come from lots of sources. Some are vapid (like content topic generators) and some are interpreted (like reviewing customer poll results). Often a simple interview with your sales or service team can teach you plenty about the mindset of your consumer. Studying on-page product reviews can also be inspiring. Focus groups, experiments; all this and more can help produce pieces of content that can be strung together and tracked in order to build a truly converting funnel.

We all know the most effective content is inspired by data, versus "crazy ideas" with no concrete evidence quickly thrown against the wall. While this occasionally has some SEO benefit (arguably less and less with Panda updates), it rarely does much for your conversion funnel. It takes that extra digging that some aren't quick to execute (at least in my experience). But what happens when your competitor is willing to do the work?

That's where you can learn some interesting things. Marketing espionage!

Granted, most competitors don't want to share their data with you, no matter how much beer you try to bribe them with (believe me, I've tried). We have tools like SEMrush to estimate search metrics, and services like Hitwise and Compete to get more online visitor data. While that is certainly helpful, it's still directional. But we're marketers - so what do we do? We get creative.

How to get a birdseye view of a content play (with common SEO tools)

It's time to lift the hood. I like to start with Screaming Frog. Most SEOs know this tool. If you don't, it's a spider that emulates what a search engine spider might find. In my experience there's no better way to find the topics a website is targeting than with a "screaming" crawl.

Filter down to HTML, and you'll find the URL, Title Tag, Meta Description, H1, and sometimes the Meta Keyword data. If you already have your own keywords and entities in mind, and want to see what a competitor is doing with them, it's as simple as searching for them in Screaming Frog (or an excel export) and scanning for it.

Click for a larger image:

Consider this totally random "shammy" example in the screenshot above. If I worked in the shammy business, through a quick scan I might be interested to know that at least one of my competitors found value enough in creating a section around an iPad cloth. Is that a segment I never considered?

Don't have Screaming Frog? The site:operator is a less powerful option. You can't export into a spreadsheet without a scrape.

Ubersuggest or keywordtool.io can be used in clever "quick and dirty" way - put in a keyword you think there's opportunity for, and add "who," "what," "where," "why," or "how" to the query. Your fragmented query will often show some questions people have asked Google. After all, plenty of great content is used to answer a query. Search some of these queries in Google and see what competitor content shows up! At the very least, this is a nice way to find more competitors who are active with creating content for their users.

At this point you should be taking notes, jotting down ideas, observations, potential content titles, and questions you want to research. Whether in a spreadsheet or the back of a napkin, you're now brainstorming with light research. Let your brain-juice flow. You should also be looking for connections between the posts you are finding. Why were they written? How do they link together? What funnels are the calls-to-action suggesting? Take notes on everything, Sherlock!

Collect the right data

Next, step it up with more quantifying data.Time to trim the fat.

Search data

By entering and measuring your extracted in Google's Keyword Planner, you'll see not only is there interest in an iPad cleaner (where an "iPad Shammy" might make sense with its own strategy), but some searcher interest in the best ways to clean an iPad. That could be fun, playful content to write - even for a shammy retailer. It could tie directly to products you already sell, or possibly lead you into carrying new products.

Click for a larger image:

Estimated searches don't tell the whole story. We know plenty of keywords and metrics from this tool are either interpolated or missing. I've found that small estimated searches can sometimes still lead to more highly-converting volume than expected. Keep that in mind.

Social data

What searches enter into Google's search box isn't the only indicator of value. Ultimately if nobody likes a certain topic or item your content, they aren't going to share or link to it. Wouldn't it be great to have another piece of evidence before you get to structuring a strategy and writing copy? That evidence may lie with your competitors' social audience.

At this point you have keyword ideas, content titles, sample competitor URLs, and possible strategies sketched out. There are some great tools for checking out what is shared in the social space. Topsy, Social Crawlytics, and Buzzsumo are solid selections. You can look up the social popularity of a given URL or domain, and in some cases drill down to influencers. If it's heavily shared, that may suggest perceived value.

Click for a larger image:

Look at the image above. If my agency is a competitor of yours, you might be interested that one of my posts got 413 social shares. It was a post called "Old School SEO Tests In Action (A 2014 SEO Experiment)". You can dig in to see the debates boiling through the comments or the reactions through social media. You can go so far as see who shared the post, how influential these people are, and what kind of topics they usually share. This helps qualify the shares.

With these social metrics I believe It's reasonably safe to infer people in the SEO space care about experiments, learning about things that move rankings, and that most believe older tactics aren't worth pursuing. With very little time at all, you might be able to come up with ways to improve upon this post or ideas for your own follow up. Maybe even a counter argument? Looking at who the post resonated with, you could presume my target audience was SEOs with a goal of providing industry insights. With a prominent lead generation form on this post, you might even suspect a secondary interest was as a source of new client leads.

If you surmised any of these things from the social data, you're 100% right! This was certainly a thought out post with those goals in mind.

Backlink data

Let's examine link popularity and return to the shammy industry. Specifically let's look at a pretty unique item - a shammy for Apple products - https://www.klearscreen.com/detail.aspx?ID=11.

Open Site Explorer found 1 link from a retailer.
Ahrefs found 8 links from 8 domains, one being a forum conversation on Stackexchange.com, and the others from a retailer.
Majestic found 13 links from 6 domains. Similiar to what Ahrefs found.
WebMeUp found 30 backlinks from 9 domains.

From this data it looks like the iPad shammy market isn't exactly on fire. Now it doesn't appear iKlear (or Klear Screen) is doing much marketing for this particular product - at least not according to Google. Their other Apple product cleaners seem to get more attention, but perhaps iKlear simply knows this isn't a high demand product. It could be true - after all it hasn't gone viral. It hasn't generated much in the way of online discussions. But it also hasn't been marketed much.

This is why all the data needs to be collected, correlated, and analyzed. You want the best hypothesis you can get before you start committing your time to a content strategy. Did this just kill a possible content strategy for an iPad Shammy, or is this a huge untapped opportunity? It entirely depends on how you interpret all the data you collect.

You've got some ideas; now what's the execution?

You just did a lot of work. You can't go off half-cocked throwing up willy-nilly content. Jeepers, no! The next step is the most crucial!

At this point you should have uncovered some great ideas based on your competitor's clues. Now comes the part where you thoughtfully determine how to implement these ideas and craft a strategic roadmap. The options are endless, which could provide a decision-making struggle. From new microsites to overhauling existing content, there's so much you can do with the gems you've dug up.

Remember to examine what your competitors did. How did they plug everything together?

But sometimes your competitors don't have a discernible content strategy. Instead just fragmented content floating like an island. This is even better for you. Now you have opportunity to not only outshine in the actual content, but put together an actual experience that your users will value, thus providing a likely positive SEO result. Here are three options I tend to build a strategy around most often:

Create a new funnel
Create content for off-page SEO
Create emphasis content

With fresh metrics, the new funnel is often necessary. Chances are you discovered uncharted territory (at least from your website's perspective). All future or existing content should have pre-conceived goals - there's a top and bottom to every funnel, and maybe some strategic off-ramps leading to forms, contact pages, or products. Remember, you're goal is to be driving the reader through an experience, eliciting emotions and appealing to their needs of which you've already built a hypothesis upon. This new funnel can dip into your current website or run parallel (ie, a microsite, sub-domian, or otherwise disconnected grouping). The greatest thing about digital marketing is that nothing is in stone. It's so easy to test these funnels and redesign with collected data when necessary.

Off-page is also very common (right link builders?). Find something that is popular, and go share it with sites more popular than yours. Maybe you can even start generating new popularity and create a segment of its own. Build a strategy to take this burgeoning topic and let the widest audience know about it. Get branding, mind share, links, and ideally profit like a beast.

The "emphasis content" (as I call it) has been a solid go-to plan for me when I discover small pockets of opportunity; notably the stuff that may have a smaller impact and isn't worth a month long content strategy. If I were to create my own iPad shammy play, based on what I'm seeing so far, I'd probably think about a page or two as emphasis content.

This content is like an independent port of entry or landing page, either to an existing funnel or a direct money maker. In a previous post I talked about creating niche collection pages for eCommerce. That could serve as emphasis content to a parent collection, but I'm usually thinking of heavier use of text in this case. Where you really take your goal, slice it up, and provide nice, beefy communication about it.

This play can be nuclear. By creating these one-off pages based on all the metrics discussed above, it's usually much easier to do targeted outreach and social marketing. A well placed page, providing well placed internal links (ideally off popular pages), can pass PageRank and context like a dream, A tool like Alchemy API can help you see the relevance of pages and help you determine the best place to publish this page

Summary

A content strategy doesn't go far if it's phoned in. Take all the help you can get, even if it's from a competitor. Learn from businesses who took steps before you. They may have very well discovered the holy grail. Competitive research has always been a part of any marketing campaign, but scratching the surface only gets you superficial results. Look deeper to uncover more than just a competitor's marketing plan, but the very reason why the competitor may be beating you in search. Then, hopefully you'll become the rock star others are trying to copy from. That's a good problem to have.

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Demystifying Data Visualization for Marketers

Posted: 16 Jul 2014 07:05 AM PDT

Posted by Annie Cushing

I presented on wrangling and demystifying the data visualization process for marketers at MozCon this year, and it turns out there was far more to talk about than could fit into that half-hour. For the sake of those who couldn't make it and those who could but want to learn more, I pulled together this overview of my presentation, offering more detail than I could in the slides.

To see all of the links shared in this post, check out my MozCon Bitly bundle.

Demystifying Data Visualization for Marketers from Annie Cushing

You may want to open the SlideShare file in another tab or browser window, so you can easily toggle between the post and the SlideShare.

I'm going to go through the presentation slide by slide to bring the narrative to print.

Slide 3

I have a confession: Although it's probably safe to say I'm a fairly advanced Excel user — at least among marketers — until recently I had no real charting strategy. In fact, I signed up to do this presentation partly to force me to carve out a strategy, particularly with Google Analytics data.

Slide 4

In this presentation I have focused on Google Analytics data for a couple reasons:

If you can wrangle Google Analytics, other marketing data is a walk in the park.
It has naming conventions that map beautifully to Excel, making it an ideal tutor.

Slide 5

My approach may seem a bit Karate Kid-esque, but if you can grasp the interplay between Google Analytics and Excel, you'll never be left wondering how to visualize your data.

Although there are many aspects to data visualization, I focus primarily on charting.

Slide 6

In Excel there are two components to charts that are critical to understand: data series and categories. They are always used together.

Think of categories as buckets for your data and data series as the data itself.

Slide 7

If you dumped a pile of Legos in front of a group of kids and told them to organize them by color into their corresponding, labeled containers and then count them, the containers would be categories. And the data series would be the count of Lego bricks.

Slide 8

First let's peek under the hood on a PC by cracking open the Select Data Source dialog. You get to it by right-clicking on your chart and choosing Select Data.

Slide 9

Excel for Mac also has data series on the left and categories on the right. And that's about all they have in common.

Slide 10

But, as with most features in Excel for Mac, the functionality of the Mac's Data Source dialog is far inferior to that of the PC.

Slide 11

This sort option is helpful if you have a stacked chart and want to sort the individual data series. I like to put the larger series on the bottom and smaller ones on the top. But if you have a stacked chart on the Mac and you want to reorder the data series, you actually have to delete the series you want demoted and manually add it back in.

It's kind of like that game, Hand on Hand, you might have played as a kid where kids go around in a circle putting their right hands in the middle, followed by the left hands. Then they go around the circle moving the bottom hands to the top of the pile as fast as possible.

Although in this case, you're moving the data series to the bottom of the pile.

Slide 12

To move the Sessions data series to the bottom of the pile, first select it from the Series list.

Slide 13

Then click the Remove button to delete it from the list.

Slide 14

Then click the Add button to add it back to the list of data series.

Slide 15

Click the data selector button to the right of the Name field and select the series name, as directed in the screenshot.

Slide 16

Click the data selector button to the right of the Y values field and click-and-drag over the values. If the column is long, just click the first cell and press Ctrl-Shift-Down Arrow (Mac: Command-Shift-Down Arrow) to select the entire column without scrolling. (We are nothing if not efficient.)

Slide 17

And finally you need to click-and-drag over the category axis labels. Which brings us to the Mac's other issue ….

Slide 18

In the PC version, there's one place for the category axis labels. On the Mac you have to choose the axis labels for each series. It's counter-intuitive.

Slide 19

Categories end up along the horizontal axis — or the vertical axis for horizontal bar charts.

Slide 20

The data series ends up in the legend and is usually a metric (from GA). But there are a couple exceptions, which we'll get to in a minute. The categories populate to the horizontal axis label or vertical axis label with the bar chart.

Slide 21

Transition to Google Analytics.

Slide 22

The two major players in Google Analytics – that we'll be mapping to Excel – are dimensions and metrics. They're (practically) inseparable.

Slide 23

Dimensions are the buckets your data is broken up into. These come into Excel as text – even if they're values – like you get with the Days to Transaction dimension (which you can get from Conversions > Ecommerce > Time to Purchase). They are always the far-left column of the table.

Add a secondary dimension in any report (standard or custom).

Create a custom flat table with two dimensions. Learn how in this post.

Use the API. This is the only option that will allow you to use more than two dimensions. You can pull up to seven dimensions in one API call.

Slide 24

Metrics are anything that can be measured with a number.

Slide 25

If you're in a custom report (or have clicked the Edit link at the top of most standard reports), metrics always show up to a party in blue.

Slide 26

And dimensions show up as green.

You can learn more about custom reports from the video tutorial I created to help marketers.

Now it's time to marry Google Analytics and Excel.

Slide 27

In most cases dimensions in Google Analytics map to categories in Excel.

Slide 28

And metrics map to data series in Excel.

Slide 29

I'm going to break this down systematically, based on the number of dimensions and metrics you're wanting to visualize.

Slide 30

Dimensions: 0

Metrics: Multiple

You want this if you want to know aggregate numbers, e.g, sessions for the month, or revenue, or goal completions.

Slide 31

I hate to start on a downer, but you need the API to do this. The GA interface requires at least one dimension.

Slide 32

As with most things, if you prod enough, you'll discover hacks and workarounds. But the name of the game here is to come up with a dimension that will only have one bucket. Going back to the Legos analogy, it would be kind of like saying, "Put all the plastic Legos in this bucket and count them."

Slide 33

Workaround: Set dimension to something that will encompass all of your data, meaning you'll only have one row in the report. One example of that would be the User Defined dimension (under Audience > Custom > User Defined).

As you'll see in the screenshot, all of the values are consolidated as (not set) since this profile (now called view) doesn't use the User Defined dimension.

Slide 34

If you're still using the User Defined dimension (and, therefore, have multiple rows reporting), you really need to update.

If you're using classic GA, you should be using custom variables and custom dimensions if you're using Universal.

Slide 35

Another option is to use the Year dimension with a custom report. This is ideal if you are gathering data for a single month. You can aggregate data beyond one month, as long as the date range you choose doesn't straddle more than one year.

Slide 36

Here's what the custom report looks like under the hood. Learn how to create custom reports in Google Analytics in a video tutorial I did.

Slide 37

You can access this report here while logged in to Google Analytics.

Slide 38

This data isn't conducive to charting, but you can sexy up a table with sparklines and conditional formatting.

Slide 40

Dimensions: 1

Metrics: 1

An example of this might be revenue segmented by country or bounce rate segmented by device category.

Slide 41

Pie Chart Basics

Here are some highlights about the pie chart:

They use angles to show the relative size of each value.
You should put data in descending order to put the most significant data point at 12:00 and radiate clockwise.
Avoid 3D pie charts. They distort data.
Data points must add up to 100%. So you can't take traffic from 5 of your 8 campaigns and chart them.
Microsoft says no more than seven categories; I say no more than five.
None of the values in your data series can be negative.
Learn more

Pie Chart Tricks

Ways to trick out your chart:

You can grab a piece of the pie to isolate it and drag it out slightly to draw attention to it. This is called exploding pie pieces.
You can also change the values to percentages in the data labels or even add the categories, thereby negating the need for a legend.

Slide 42

Donut Chart Basics

Here are some highlights about the donut chart:

Donut charts show data in rings, where each ring represents a data series
It uses the length of the arc to indicate the size of the value.
You should put data in descending order to put the most significant data point at 12:00 and radiate clockwise.
Data points must add up to 100%. So you can't take traffic from 5 of your 8 campaigns and chart them.
Microsoft says no more than seven categories; I say no more than five.
None of the values in your data series can be negative.
Learn more

Donut Chart Tricks

Ways to trick out your chart:

You can put the title or the value you want to highlight in the center.

I don't recommend using the donut chart for multiple series or dimensions. They're more difficult to interpret.

Like the pie chart, you can pull one out to draw attention to it.
You can use a donut chart to create a speedometer chart.
You can fill it with an image that resembles the surface of a donut to make it look like a … Okay, yeah, never mind …

Slide 43

Column Chart Basics

Should sort in descending order.
The axis should start at 0.
Categories don't have to add up to 100%
Learn more

Column Chart Tricks

You can add a trendline to make trends stand out.
Consider going totally minimalist with the techniques I demonstrate in this video tutorial. (You can skip to the 15:53 mark.)
Don't be afraid to move the legend around.
Excel's default axis tends to be dense. I typically double the Major Unit, so if the major unit is set to 100, I typically up it to 200. Learn more about the major unit from the Microsoft site. (But I also show how in the above-mentioned video tutorial.
You can use a column chart to create a bullet graph to show current data vis-à-vis goals or projections.
You can use a column chart to create a waterfall chart.
You can add a target line to your chart.
If you have many categories to chart, you can use a scrollbar.
You can use a column chart to create a thermometer chart.
Just remember safety first when working with column charts.

Slide 44

Bar Chart Basics

You need to sort your data in ascending order to put the longest bars at the top.
Bar charts are good for categories with longer labels.
You shouldn't use bar charts if your dimension is time based (date, month, etc.).
Learn more

Bar Chart Tricks

You can use all of the tricks (except the last two) listed in the Column Chart Tricks list.

Slide 45

Radar Chart Basics

Category labels are at the tip of each spine.
You can use a fill with your radar charts.

Radar Chart Tricks

Radar charts can be compelling when you compare multiple entities at once. For example, I saw a set of 50 radar charts that compared metrics like crime rates for different types of crime for each state.
If you don't want the axis labels to show, you can set the number formatting to ;;; to hide them altogether. You can then include an annotation on your chart that lets viewers know the intervals.

Slide 46

Notes about the Heat Map

Learn how to create a heat map in this video tutorial I did.

Slide 47

And now let's look under the hood at a typical chart that uses 1 dimension and 1 metric. Let's say we have this table of analytics data ….

Slide 48

If we create a column chart from this table, this is what it's going to look like (with some cleanup).

Slide 49

Now if we look at the data source this is what we'll see ….

Slide 50

The mediums show up over here in the categories …

Slide 51

And the sessions values show up here in the data series …

Slide 52

Which populates to the legend. But you can delete the legend when you only have one metric (or data series). You'll then want to include the metric in the chart title.

Slide 53

And the mediums populate the horizontal axis labels.

A little piece of Excel trivia: The Select Data Source dialog still says Horizontal Axis Labels, even for bar charts where the labels are on the vertical axis. #pedantic

Slide 54

Example of 1 dimension and multiple metrics: Sessions, goal completions, and revenue broken down by Device Category (mobile, tablet, desktop)

BTW, the Device Category dimension is one of the most important in Google Analytics. By itself it's pretty useless, but in the context of other data, it's very useful. You should be segmenting all of your data by it.

Slide 55

Notes about the Clustered Column Chart

Clustered column charts are good for showing comparisons (e.g, sessions vs revenue for each month or ROI vs Margin by campaign (or keyword).
You could transform the clustered column chart into a combination chart by adding a line chart on the secondary axis that adds a percent value.

Slide 56

Notes about the Stacked Column Chart

The stacked column chart is good for showing how each data series contributes to the whole.
An example might be revenue broken down by medium.
If you want to order the columns by overall height, you can create a total column for the series. You just won't chart that column.

Slide 57

Notes about the Clustered Bar Chart

All of the notes in the above-mentioned stacked column chart.
Like the [single] bar chart, the clustered bar chart is better for categories with long labels.
You can hack the clustered bar chart to create a double-sided bar chart. You can view a video tutorial I did on how to do this.

Slide 58

Notes about the Stacked Bar Chart

If you want to sort the bars so that the longer bars are on top, create a totals column and sort it in ascending order.
You shouldn't use the stacked bar chart if your dimension is time oriented (date, month, etc.).

Slide 59

Notes about the 100% Stacked Column Chart

Use the 100% stacked column chart when you are working with percentages.
The data series must add up to 100%.
For example, if you wanted to see what percentage of social referrals came from desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.

Slide 60

Notes about the 100% Stacked Bar Chart

All of the notes under the 100% stacked column chart apply here.

Slide 61

Notes about the Radar Chart

Category labels are at the tip of each spine.
You can use a fill with your radar charts.
Radar charts can be compelling when you compare multiple entities at once. For example, I saw a set of 50 radar charts that compared metrics like crime rates for different types of crime for each state.
If you don't want the axis labels to show, you can set the number formatting to ;;; to hide them altogether. You can then include an annotation on your chart that lets viewers know the intervals. See the screenshot under the Slide 45 note above.

Slide 62

Notes about the Combination Chart

Learn all about combination charts in this post I wrote on the Search Engine Land site.

Slide 63 – 69

Self-explanatory as they follow the same dialog as slides 46 – 52.

Slide 71

Notes about the Line Chart

In a line chart, category data is usually distributed evenly along the horizontal axis and value data is distributed evenly along the vertical axis.
Line charts can show continuous data over time, so they're ideal for showing trends in data at equal intervals, like months, quarters, or fiscal years.
You can add markers and set the lines to none to use them in ranking charts.
Avoid using stacked line charts. It's not always apparent that the data series are stacked. If you want to stack, use an area chart instead.
You can add interesting line markers like the ones I created in this video tutorial to replicate the charts in Moz's tool set.

Slide 72

Notes about the Stacked Area Chart

Ideal for showing stacked data series over time, especially if you want to demonstrate a fluid trend. Stacked column charts should be used if you want to keep each of the categories more disparate.
You should order the data series so that the larger series are at the bottom of the stack with the smaller series being clustered together at the top because people's eyes naturally travel from the horizontal axis upward with stacked area charts.
If you keep the gridlines, make them significantly lighter. A light gray works well.
Make sure you have adequate contrast between contiguous data series. Sometimes Excel puts two colors next to each other that blend.
If you have smaller data series that are difficult to see, use stronger colors to make them easier to view.
If you have all larger data series and you want to add some finesse, give your data series a line (what would be called a stroke in graphic design programs) that's slightly darker than the fill.
You can create a combination chart with a stacked area chart. Just don't use a line chart for the other style. I like to use a chart style that stands out from the area chart, such as a column chart. You may want to increase the transparency of its fill so that you can easily see through to the stacked area chart.

Slide 73

Notes about the Clustered Column Chart

You use the clustered column chart to show comparisons between data series (as opposed to how they contribute to the whole).
The clustered column chart is especially effective for showing year-over-year data. The categories would just have the name of the month (I abbreviate to three letters, which you can learn how to do in this tutorial), and one column would be used to show data from one year and the other colored column would indicate the previous year. To show the month from each year as a disparate data series, you would have to make each year a separate column in your data.
You can add a line chart on the secondary axis that highlights the percent change between values.
You can play with the gap width and overlap settings to adjust the series. You get to those by selecting a column, pressing Ctrl-1 (Mac: Command-1), and navigating to the Series Options (Mac: Options) area of the Format Data Series dialog.
Excel doesn't provide the option to add a data label that indicates the total of all the data series for each column. You can hack one by adding a total column that you include in the clustered column but then change to a line chart. From there, remove the line and add data labels above the line.

Slide 74

Same as Slide 60.

Slide 75

Same as Slide 58

Slide 76 – 77

Self-explanatory.

Slide 78

Things get more complicated when you want to chart two dimensions. There are three ways to get 2 dimensions:

Slide 79

So here we have two dimensions (Device Category and User Type). I picked these dimensions to demonstrate because they have a finite number of options. I LOVE the device category dimension and use it frequently to segment my data in Google Analytics.

Note: When you chart two dimensions, you can only use one metric (or data series in Excel).

Slide 80

Here's an example of what a clustered column chart might look like.

Slide 81

We now have a dimension in the legend — or category in Excel.

Slide 82

Using the Switch Row/Column button ….

Slide 83

This is what the chart would now look like. Notice we now have three data series and two categories.

Slide 84

Now let's take a peek under the hood.

Slide 85

Again, here you see we have dimensions, not metrics, in the data series. The metrics should be included in the chart title.

Slide 86

And now the Device Category dimension is in the category area.

Slide 87

Your chart options are the same as when you had one dimension and multiple metrics. These options are not exhaustive.

Slide 88

Slide 89

The data in this table is in report format. If only marketing export data came in this format. (It doesn't.)

Slide 90

This is how marketing data actually comes out of different marketing tools. It's called tabular format.

Slide 91

Just as in a database, rows in tabular data are called records.

Slide 92

Columns are called fields.

Slide 93

And the column headings are called field names. But if I were to select two dimension columns and one metric and select a chart, here's how Excel digests the data …

Slide 94

Gross, I know. I'm a child.

Slide 95

Here's what it actually looks like. A royal mess.

Slide 96

Excel requires that data be in a report format in order to chart two dimensions. And the one metric (sessions, revenue, impressions, whatever) goes into the green area. There's only one way to corral an export with two dimensions and one metric into report format ...

Slide 97

Pivot tables sound scary and intimidating but not if you think about what pivot means.

Slide 98

When a soldier pivots, s/he very simply goes from standing facing one direction to turning at a 90 degree angle. That's what a pivot table does. By moving one of your dimensions into the Columns field (Mac: Column Labels field), Excel puts that dimension's values across the top of your data.

Once you have your data in report format, and you can chart it. You typically want to put the dimension with fewer values into the columns area.

Learn how to create pivot tables in this comprehensive video tutorial I did.

Slide 99

Although pivot tables come with a lot of junk in the trunk, you can see the pivot table puts the data into report layout, which Excel can then use to chart the data. If you're on a PC, you can create a pivot chart. If you're on a Mac, you can create a static chart from the pivot table because Excel for Mac still doesn't support pivot charts. Still. Ridic.

Slide 100

Now you're ready to look at GA data — nay, all marketing data — with a more strategic eye… And spend less time tooling around in Excel trying to figure out how to visualize your data!