Reports are often written to show that work has been done, and they turn into long files that nobody reads to the end. For us, a report only makes sense for work where the numbers move every week, and even there it never runs past a single page. The Monday report is our name for the short summary we send on the first morning of the week for ongoing work such as advertising, SEO, social media and e-commerce management.
Not every job needs a report
In project work, such as a website or a one-off setup, the deliveries show the progress. The design comes in for approval, the page goes live, the form either works or it doesn’t; adding a weekly report on top of that produces noise, not information. What you need in project work is a clear plan showing what will be delivered when, and each delivery itself. If the work continues with advertising or SEO once the site is live, the report starts that week.
Reports are for ongoing work, where the numbers move from week to week:
- Advertising management: the budget is spent every day; cost and conversions change every week.
- SEO: rankings, organic traffic and the enquiries that traffic brings move slowly but constantly.
- Social media: the messages, enquiries and sales that come from posts are read weekly.
- E-commerce management: orders, returns, stock and cost per order paint a new picture every week.
In this kind of work, the report is less a proof of what was done and more the information needed to make next week’s decisions.
What goes on the one page
The Monday report comes with the same four headings every week:
- What was done last week? Completed work, in short bullet points. If something couldn’t be done, the reason and the new date.
- Which numbers changed, and why? 3–5 chosen numbers; for each one, last week, this week and a one-sentence explanation.
- What will be done this week? Five items at most; each has an owner and a day.
- What do we need from you? Approval, access, content or information, along with how long we have been waiting for it.
A topic that doesn’t fit on the page is not a priority that week. If detail is needed, it isn’t added to the report; it is shared in a separate note. Because the template is the same every week and the numbers are pulled from their source on a regular basis, the report takes about fifteen minutes to write. The language is plain: short sentences and clear numbers instead of platform jargon and decorative charts. The report’s job is not to explain everything but to let the reader understand where things stand in a few minutes.
Choosing the right numbers
The numbers in the report are chosen by working backwards from the result. First comes the event where the business actually makes money: a sale, a qualified quote request, an appointment or a registration. Then come one or two indicators the team can influence this week, and one cost figure. The total never goes beyond 3–5 numbers; the sixth number is usually the one nobody reads.
Numbers such as impressions, likes, followers and clicks look good on their own but don’t tell you what happened to the business. They go into the report only if they explain a business result. For an e-commerce account, net orders and ad cost per order; for a manufacturer, qualified quote requests and cost per request; for a clinic, the number of appointments booked: that is usually enough.
The chosen numbers stay the same every week. A report that highlights the conversion rate one week and clicks the next has picked out the good news, and any chance of comparison is gone. Each number also has a written definition: where it comes from, what it counts and what it doesn’t. When we say “enquiry”, do we mean everyone who filled in the form, or only the people who actually want work done? That definition is written once and changes only for a clear reason, stated in the report.
The problem is not too few numbers; it is everyone looking at a different one.
Decisions go in the report
A decision discussed by email or on the phone doesn’t count as a decision until it is written down. So the bottom of the report has a short decisions section, and every decision answers four questions:
- What was decided? One sentence that can be acted on.
- Why? Which number or piece of information it rests on.
- Who owns it? The one person who will carry out the decision and follow it up.
- When will we look at it again? The date on which the decision will be reviewed.
A line might read like this: “The daily budget on non-brand search campaigns stays fixed for two weeks. Reason: the tracking error at the payment step has been fixed, and we want a clean read of the new data. Owner: the specialist who manages the account. Review: 28 October.”
When a decision reaches its review date, it appears again in that week’s report. A decision that changes is not deleted; the new one is written in its place, with a note on why the old one changed. The owner is always a person; “the team” or “the client” cannot be an owner. This way, three months later, the answer to “why did we do this?” comes from past reports, not from memory.
When a number moves
When a number falls or rises unexpectedly, the first reaction is usually to change something straight away. We first check whether the measurement is sound, whether there is a calendar effect such as a holiday or the season, and what we changed that week. Then we write the situation up in the report in three parts:
- What happened? One sentence: “Cost per order rose compared with last week.”
- What is the likely cause? What we know, or our best guess; if it is a guess, we say so plainly.
- What is the next step? What will be done, who will do it and when we will look at it again.
Bad weeks are not hidden. Pushing a falling number to the bottom of the report, or putting a different number up front that week, only puts the problem off for a week and destroys the report’s credibility. Good weeks are written up just as plainly; knowing what worked is as valuable as knowing what didn’t. We are also careful not to change several things at once: if three changes are made together, you never learn which one worked.
Monday morning, by email
The report arrives by email on Monday morning, because that is when the week is planned, and the report is what the plan rests on. It doesn’t need a meeting. A client with a question or an objection simply replies to the email. We suggest a phone call only when a decision has to be made, for example if the budget is going to change or a campaign is going to stop. That way nobody loses time from their calendar every week, and calls happen when they are really needed. Past reports sit in order in your inbox; you don’t need to look anywhere else to find a number or a decision from four weeks ago. If you would like to set up the numbers and the measurement behind them together with us, take a look at our data and CRO service.