[jwillgoesfast]

>"Most KPIs (traffic, revenue) are too volatile on a daily basis to be useful. Yet “last 30 days daily” is more or less the default option."

YES! If you're building a dashboard, don't answer the question "what data do I have?" or "what does the brass say this should be?" But instead, get out and talk to users, find out what data is most important to them, think outside the box, throw some different ideas out there and see what sticks with users.

[MartyHoekstra]

And often, the end user has no idea what information is useful to them until it is presented. In that way dashboards are great: they help the end user figure out what data is important to them.

[thijsb]

I can only agree. Especially real-time data. There are only a few cases where real-time might be usefull

[mehh]

If you have a site delivering real time content, such as news, its pretty important.

[yummyfajitas]

Not really. Humans are more or less incapable of filtering noise and avoiding making premature choices in realtime. "OMFG, this story blipped upward in a statistically insignificant way. Hype it!" Myself and a colleage ran this experiment several times at a large news organization. Realtime is useful for algorithms, useless for humans.

Of course if you are marketing an analytics product, give the customer a realtime dashboard. It's useless but it makes them feel powerful and in control. The news writers would certainly have thrown a fit if we tried to take away their useless chartbeat.