Spotlighting consumer data

Halloween Headquarters is just one of more than a dozen pages spotlighting consumer data and holiday trends.

Halloween Headquarters is just one of more than a dozen pages spotlighting consumer data and holiday trends.

The National Retail Federation is known for its consumer data, and national news media frequently reference our survey findings when covering holidays and spending events throughout the year.

Showing the highlights and trends has always been a challenge. Making infographics and charts takes time, and making the data public as quickly as possible has always been a priority. In early 2016, I worked with our in-house research and web development teams to launch a new chart-building tool on our Drupal website. The tool lets us build and update custom charts quickly, and unlike static images, the resulting data visualizations are dynamic content that allows for user interaction and is search engine indexing.

The results:

Our data visualizations don’t just look better; they add important UX and SEO value. And in 2016, pageviews for our major consumer spending “headquarters” pagesBack-to-school, Halloween and Holiday — were up 10-20 percent over 2015.