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Nobody reads your reports for a reason
Jeff Sauer
October 09, 2025
In partnership with
Your reports are stuck in 1995
Do your reports look like Apple's 1995 website?
Amy Hebdon made this connection during her well-received MeasureSummit presentation yesterday, and it's painfully accurate.
That cramped grid layout with no breathing room. Information everywhere with no hierarchy. No clear call to action. Sound familiar?
The difference? Apple's 1995 site is a historical curiosity. Your report template is what you sent to stakeholders yesterday.
The Three-Decade Gap
Web design evolved rapidly because money was on the line. E-commerce grew from zero to trillions in thirty years. Every improvement in conversion rates meant immediate revenue impact.
Reporting never had that pressure. Most reports don't directly drive revenue. So we're still arguing whether anyone even reads them.
But Amy's insight changes everything: Apply the same conversion principles that transformed websites to your reports.
The Core Problem
Most reports start with "What can I show?" instead of "Who needs this?"
It's the classic mistake websites made in the '90s. Remember those "Welcome to my website" homepages that told you all about the company but nothing about why you should care?
Your reports do the same thing. They showcase what you can measure instead of solving what your audience needs to know.
The Three Questions Framework
Amy breaks actionable reporting into three questions:
Who is this for?
What action should they take?
What will help them take that action?
Sounds simple. It's not.
Who Is This For?
You have an advantage over website designers. You know your audience personally. It's your CFO, your director, your client.
But knowing their name isn't enough. You need to understand what they're accountable for and what they need from your report to succeed.
Amy recommends borrowing from the "Jobs to be Done" framework: This report is hired to help [stakeholder] do [job] by providing [data/insight/action].
The tactical questions that matter:
What's the official source of truth for each metric?
When systems conflict, which do you trust and why?
What decisions do you expect this report to help you make?
Get clarity on these before you build anything. Otherwise, you'll create reports that get dismissed because "we don't trust that data."
What Action Should They Take?
This is where Amy introduces "invisible CTAs" - calls to action you can't click but that drive the entire report structure.
Three categories:
Do: Fix the landing page to recover conversions. Approve budget reallocation. Adjust strategy to defend against competitors.
Know: Holiday promo drove 15% revenue increase. Apple's privacy updates reduced match rates. Tracking glitch caused data discrepancy.
Feel: Upset that a competitor is outspending us. Optimistic we bounced back from a bad month. Worried we're slipping in rankings.
That last one matters more than you think. Amy points out that we often try to tone down negative emotions in reports. But urgency drives action. When your phone battery is at 2%, which icon motivates you to find a charger?
What Will Help Them Take Action?
Here's where conversion principles really shine.
“Revenue is $17K” tells you nothing without context. You need the target, the comparison, the trend. You need the story, not just the number.
Amy shows the same revenue chart telling three different stories:
"I'm celebrating because we beat our targets"
"I need to fix the checkout cart issue"
"I need to decide whether to increase budgets"
Same data. Completely different actions. The difference is context and presentation.
The Visual Hierarchy Problem
Too many reports look like airplane cockpits. Fine if you're the pilot. Useless if you're the passenger.
Your stakeholders are passengers. They see numbers occasionally, not constantly. What's obvious to you is invisible to them.
Good reports use the same visual principles as modern websites:
Give big ideas room to breathe
Use contrast to guide attention
Emphasize what matters most
De-emphasize supporting details
The Implementation Reality
Start by asking better questions:
How can I make your job easier?
What questions from leadership do you want this report to answer?
Is there anything confusing that I should clarify?
The first few times you ask, they'll say "it's fine." Keep asking. Eventually, they'll tell you what they actually need.
Why This Matters Now
We're drowning in data but starving for insights. AI can generate endless charts and tables. But converting data into action? That's still a human skill.
The organizations that master this will have a massive advantage. While everyone else is arguing about whether reports are worth the time, you'll be driving decisions that actually move the business forward.
The Bigger Picture
Amy calls this "taking reports out of the '90s and into the 2000s and beyond."
But really, it's about recognizing that reporting is a conversion problem, not a data problem.
Your stakeholders aren't failing to act because they lack information. They're failing to act because you haven't made action feel obvious and necessary.
Change that, and your reports stop being something people ignore and start being something they can't function without.
To Your Measured Success!
--Jeff Sauer
Co-Founder of MeasureU
P.S. There is still time to register and attend the final two days of MeasureSummit 2025.
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