The right stats, in the right place, at the right time

The Torque team at the Melbourne office are all signed up a highly competitive footy tipping mini-league, courtesy of the NAB AFL Footy Tipping Competition. So every Monday morning we see how we faired tipping that weekend’s footy team winners. Usually this involves a bit of ridicule for those who forgot to put their tips in, and a comparison against one entrant who uses a self-built ‘Random Number Generator’ which predicts the winning footy teams randomly. Needless to say this entrant is currently bottom of the league!

What I’ve realised though, is how well designed the NAB footy tipping system is. Firstly, you get a reminder email, usually around Thursday to put your tips in for that weekend. If you got the email any earlier it would probably be too early in the week to think about doing your tips. But get the email any later and no doubt it would get lost in that end of week work rush. The main thing that impresses me though, is the web layout of the page where you enter your tips.

On the right hand pane there is a stat summary which shows the list of footy teams in order of where they currently sit in the league. It also shows each teams performance for their last five games with a W or L flag for wins and losses. As you go to enter your tips and hover over the first game of the weekend, the two teams involved will be highlighted in the league list so that your attention is drawn to the relevant stats to help you decide which team should win this week, based on past performance. That isn’t all though. In the table you can also hover over a W/L flag to see details about each win or loss. Namely who did they play and what was the score. So you might see that a team is on a winning streak but after reviewing the individual game stats you’ll also see that actually they have only narrowly managed wins over some pretty ordinary teams. So maybe they will lose this week?

This all got me thinking about how important it is to have the right stats exactly when and where you need them. While footy tipping is clearly an important decision, there are other decisions that this principle applies to. As the opportunities and usage of data driven marketing grow, Marketing Managers increasingly face the danger of too many decisions, too much information and too little time. It is data visualisations and reporting such as this that maintain simplicity while being highly relevant to the task at hand. The best insights in the world are worthless if they are merely a needle in a haystack of less important or relevant stats.

NL