If Only It Were Bigger…
I get all sorts of spam in my e-mail about making things bigger, but none of them are for the one thing I really want bigger: the interface for Omniture Excel Client.
It took me some time to get used to the Excel Client that Omniture offers. Mostly it was because I was not sure what reports I needed or how I wanted the data. That makes looking for an easy way to get the data difficult. After a few weeks working with Omniture I was comfortable enough to begin using Omniture Excel Client (OEC) on a regular basis. Life is filled with peaks and valleys from there on out.
Because the interface is connecting to Omniture it is inherently slow to do pretty much anything. Now it is not horrible (most of the time) but when working in Excel changes are instant – think changing the font – and working in this slower interface takes some getting used to. I will dedicate some future post to the issues and gleeful moments I have with the OEC but for now lets get back to the size issue.
OEC does not allow you to re-size the interface that you are working in. So, for instance, if I am using the “Pages” or “Most Popular Pages” report and I see a list of page names, part of the names get cut off. There is no side scrolling option to be found. You just have to sit there and wonder what the full page name really is. I will point out that this may not be an issue for lots of people, but if your site is large enough page names can get pretty long. Also, I am a fan of descriptive page names so that when you see just the page name it is informative. Names such as “Brand” “Item” “Size” or “Gender” “Size” “Shirt Type” are much better than a product number for page names.
So the real question here is why is the interface of OEC set up this way? Did they not do QA testing on this? I don’t have the answers. All I know is that adding a side scrolling bar – not my favorite option but better than nothing – cannot be all that difficult to add into the interface. Never mind that this issue persists in the newest version of OEC. Long page names are a reality and while you can use the search or advanced search to narrow your results it is a pain to have to do. Plus, OEC doesn’t save your advanced search so if you get results and need to edit it – such as exclude an additional word or phrase – be prepared to re-enter the entire search. Lots of NOT fun here too.
I am not sure what it will take for Omniture to fix this. Apparently they have not got the notice that size matters.
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