Item: DashThis
Rating: 9
Author: Vicki Lesage

Overall Satisfaction with DashThis

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our digital marketing department uses DashThis to provide easy-to-understand reports to clients each month. It saves time since most reports can be updated automatically and provides a unified, streamlined look for the client, allowing them to quickly check how their website and digital marketing efforts are performing all in one place.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Displaying data in a clear and aesthetically pleasing way
Integrating with most of the systems you use on a regular basis in web design and digital marketing
Allowing you to quickly create new charts/graphs/reports for clients

Cons

I'd like the ability to archive a report so that it doesn't count against my dashboard total. There are a few reports we're not likely to use again, and if so we would gladly upgrade. But I'd hate to delete them just to free up space.
This is REALLY minor, but it would be nice to have more flexibility when uploading a client's logo to a report. Right now I have to resize it and add a transparent background if it's not the right shape to get it to the right dimensions before I can upload. It would be nice if they allowed for different dimensions.

Return on Investment

Using DashThis has freed up hours to work on more strategic objectives for our clients instead of using our time pulling clunky reports.
Using DashThis has also helped us get a better picture of the data so that we can make data-driven recommendations for our clients.

Alternatives Considered

Google Data Studio and Klipfolio

Google Data Studio display reports that look nice, but the learning curve on getting everything set up is steeper. I had a hard time figuring out where to get started, whereas with DashThis it was super easy. I haven't used Klipfolio but I've seen the reports it outputs. They're decent but I just really like how DashThis looks!

Other Software Used

Google Analytics

Likelihood to Recommend

It's great if you have to provide reports (either internally or for clients) on a regular basis. It takes a little time to set up your structure (surely comparable to the time you'd spend in another tool and definitely faster than doing it manually), but then it saves so much time on an ongoing basis. It's also really important when you want your reports to look good -- which is pretty much all the time! No more Word documents here and Excel spreadsheet there with mismatched formatting all over the place. Now you can have one streamlined look, which allows you to view the data more easily and not get tripped up on the report itself.

Honestly, I think it's appropriate in pretty much any situation! I guess maybe if you were just pulling one report one time, then it might not be worth the time it takes to set up, but even then it depends -- you still have the benefit of one clear, streamlined look for all your data. And it's less error-prone.

Comments

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Dash out and buy DashThis!