In the latest post in his Excellent Analytics series, Avinash Kaushik demonstrates how one slight change in the labeling of the data series in a report can transform it from being cold and impersonal into something meaningful with which business managers can 'connect'.

His example is changing the row label for 'Visitors of 3 pages or less' to the more descriptive 'Flirters' which helped the people working on his web site (he works for Intuit) to better envision the situation and more actively focus on potential improvements. (Read the whole post for more details and a better description of the results.)

Two of the dirty-little-secrets of the analytics world are that the distance between interesting and actionable is often great, and that half-a-dozen charts and tables can make anyone's eyes glaze over and yet most report-sets deliver dozens. Avinash wisely sets it as the analysts job to make the data relevant and his choice of the word 'connect' as the goal is perfect.

Bonus Link: Avinash recently interviewed Matt Belkin, VP of Best Practices, at Omniture.