A client came to me requesting the ability to track certain data from visitors, internally. (mainly, the hits themselves, realtime). Then that data was to be used on a public page as social proof. The data needed to be stored in the database and I chose to use shortcodes for the output so the data could be styled and inserted anywhere the client wanted without additional developer assistance.
I can’t share more details on the client project until a later date but when the time comes, perhaps I’ll open source the plugin code for anyone that may be interested.