A monthly report someone will actually read

The four things that earn their place

Keep each one short enough to say aloud. If you are the client, ask for them. If you are the agency, lead with them and put the charts behind.

1. The result. Enquiries, calls, booked jobs or sales, compared with the previous month, and what you paid in the same period. If tracking is incomplete, say that in the same sentence. Do not present a broken number as a performance drop. The cookie banner guide and the zero-revenue guide are there when the result cannot be trusted yet.
2. What was done. Named changes: a page, a listing, a campaign, a fix. 'Continued work on SEO' does not belong here. A client should be able to go and look.
3. What is blocked. Who it is waiting on, since when, and what happens if it stays blocked.
4. What is next. The few things planned for the coming month, and how you will know they worked. A date helps.

Where the work came from

One line on source is enough, once the counting is honest: organic search, the Maps listing, Google Ads, email, or 'we do not know yet'. A channel that produces no enquiries for a third month is a decision, not a chart to keep including out of habit.

What to stop putting on page one

These can live in an appendix for the person who wants them. They should not be the story.

• Impressions with no clicks beside them. Being shown is not being chosen.
• A long list of keywords with no comment on which ones led to an enquiry.
• Vanity totals that always go up because the site has been online for another month.
• A score you cannot act on. If a number does not change what someone will do next week, it is not the headline.
• Graphs that need a paragraph of caveats before they mean anything. Write the caveat, or do not use the graph.

A shape you can copy

Half a page is a feature. The figures in the example are made up, to show the shape. They are not a customer and not a result we measured.

If you are the person writing it

Write the result even when it is flat. A trusted flat month is more useful than a busy document that avoids the number. Say what you did not do. Clients can tell when a report is measuring whatever was easy.

Agencies who want this as the default, rather than a deck assembled on Sunday night, can look at for agencies and freelancers. Owners who are judging someone else's report can start with checking an agency.