Revealing Data to Get Attention

Treehouse●Design, Web Apps 9 Comments

Map of USA color-coded by state with the most t-shirt sales

I stumbled across a really interesting example of company transparency yesterday. Shirt.Woot sells a different shirt every day and they release all the live data about where their sales are happening.

Graphs showing where t-shirt sales are happening in USA
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This is a radical approach because most companies would be afraid their competitors would use this data against them. However, Woot is smart enough to realize that this is a powerful tool for drawing potential customers in and encouraging activity. It’s really interesting to know how you compare with other folks who bought the same shirt.

Interesting, transparent, quirky data, FTW.

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Comments

  • http://blog.renaissancecms.com/ Rob Chant

    I love this kind of thing, and their graphics look great. One interesting thing though — when I first saw the map, before I looked at the key, I assumed darker areas meant more sales (i.e. darker colour equating to more ‘density’). It’s the other way around, of course.

    • Ryan Carson

      I agree Rob – that bit seems a bit backward.

  • http://blog.bongeek.com Mohammed Mudassir Azeemi

    Great idea, question is what type of business should utilized kind of trend mid or small or giants like target n walmart ?

  • http://blog.bongeek.com Mohammed Mudassir Azeemi

    Great idea, question is what type of business should utilized kind of trend mid or small or giants like target n walmart ?

  • http://www.organic-handmade-soap.com Ben

    Pretty nice visual display but I still prefer Analytics from the Big G!! would never change just as i’ve got trends dating back a couple of years.

  • bogphanny

    An Australian ISP has a similar feature, displaying the current and historical stats for call waiting times and the number of calls in queue.

    See here: http://www.internode.on.net/about/performance/call-wait-times/

  • http://virtualhires.com VHwriter

    That’s a good idea. Some buyers like seeing statistics before buying something.

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  • http://www.watchglee.biz Daryll

    hmm, revealing the data would have pros and cons but It will attract more people and in turn the company will benefit from it… great post!