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Reporting Techniques

Written by: Will Atkinson

Article Overview: A good POS system supplies a lot of reports, but what you do with them can make the difference

Reporting Techniques

Reporting, or Business Intelligence, is a big buzzword right now, but it can mean different things to different people.

For the small retailer it can be overwhelming to try to setup lots of reports and maintain strategies for running them regularly. But, it is crucial that you do so to stay on top of your business and your customers.

One way to reduce the strain on yourself is to narrow down your reporting to a set of your most valuable reports that you can run regularly. Sure, you need to take some time each month to run some more comprehensive reports to manage your finances, etc. but your inventory and sales need daily management. Distill your reporting options down to a handful of reports that will help you understand what items are selling, which ones aren't, and who is buying them. Then you can make informed decisions about inventory stocking and placement.

Another way is to give one or two of your trusted employees the power to run some of these reports. Task them with staying on top of one or two of these facets of your business that they are capable of, and share that responsibility with them. This empowers them and frees you up to do other things. Let them manage inventory locations and promotional items for example. Give them specific targets or promotional goals to achieve and let them drive sales that way.

Don't let your reporting system become a big time sink for you. Refine your reporting practices to give you the most vital information on a regular (and often) basis to help you stay competitive and increase sales.

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Article Tags: big time, business intelligence, buzzword, decisions, different things, facets, handful, inventory locations, promotional items, reporting system, staying on top, stocking, targets, time sink, vital information



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Re: Bad SEO techniques? - There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":1jr37kqx]There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash[/quote:1jr37kqx] Hi Jeff, Thanks for adding to the list. I have one question, though. How would one implement Session IDs for a URL, and what benefit would come from doing so?
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":1a8vvwse]There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash[/quote:1a8vvwse] I wouldn't think of "relying on keyword metatags", "using lots of javascript", and "implementing your site in Flash" as bad/black hat...just ineffective. The search engines don't pay much attention to keyword metatags, and using javascript/flash just means the search engines can't "read" it (so if your menu is javascript, for instance, the search engine won't see any keywords you might have in there.)
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="Alan Mater":3gnk0yja][quote="WebBizIdeas.com":3gnk0yja]There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash[/quote:3gnk0yja] Hi Jeff, Thanks for adding to the list. I have one question, though. How would one implement Session IDs for a URL, and what benefit would come from doing so?[/quote:3gnk0yja] Session ID shows up in the URL only if the method of the submitted form is GET, i.e., <form method="get"...>. If you can arrange for the form method to be POST, this particular problem does not arise. Data-transmission paths to the host differ between GET and POST. The latter, as well as being somewhat more secure, completely sidesteps the issue of fake URLs and SE confusion.
Re: Stopping Drive-by Spam - [quote:2bijpsoh]One was extremely graphic porn images that I hope I zapped before too many visitors ran across.[/quote:2bijpsoh] [quote:2bijpsoh]Thanks to those of you who have have been reporting questionable posts to me. Your comments in the private messages section are appreciated. Also, for your convenience and to save you time, you can report the spammers by clicking the "report" icon that appears in each post, to the left of the person's avatar. It is the exclamation mark inside of a triangle.[/quote:2bijpsoh] Still why I think we need to have more global moderators. As I pointed out in the thread about that, if you (GT) don't get here quick enough or if you aren't around on certain days then something like "extremely graphic porn images" could just sit here on the forum for everyone to see. Whereas if more of us could actually delete posts it would be zapped as soon as one of us saw it. Plus, it saves more time. Reporting posts and explaining why, or sending you a PM about someone takes extra time. It might only be a few minutes a day but it adds up. But if I could just hit delete and be done there's barely any time wasted. And it's a lot less work for you. I know you probably don't mind doing it but I am sure having some help would be nice. Like I said before, every forum I moderate or have ever moderated (except this one) has global moderators. I see no reason why we can't do it that way here too.


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