Table of Content
- When do you need analytics platforms?
- Why are analytics platforms pivotal?
- What are the different types of dashboards?
- What are the most important dashboard design principles?
Today’s businesses have become more data-driven than ever before; data about the company’s performance is used as a basis for decision-making across different departments. For this process to be meaningful, data has to be current, reliable, comprehensive, and shareable across different stakeholders. This is where dashboards come into play. Simply put, dashboards are a collection of visualizations neatly organized on a user interface whose objective is to present real-time information about the key business metrics. Dashboards have become ubiquitous; however, building a useful and insightful one is far from being a trivial task. But, by being intentional and following the best practices, making the perfect analytics dashboard is possible! Read on to discover dashboard use cases, types, and key design principles.
When do you need analytics platforms?
Before deciding to use a dashboard to convey data insights, it is important to determine whether it is the right choice for your situation. There are many indicators that signify when a dashboard can be useful, such as:
- Data needs to be dynamically updated
- Data exploration should be interactive
- The goal is to monitor something on a long-term basis
- Users will continuously refer back to this data as it gets updated
Hence, dashboards are most useful when there is a need to constantly show up-to-date data that users can easily interact with in order to monitor long-term performance indicators. In other cases, for example when the goal is to persuade the audience or to summarize performance indicators over a period of time, other data communication means should be used, such as reports or presentations.
Why are analytics platforms pivotal?
Dashboards bring a lot of value to the business decision-making process, they:
- Present current, reliable, and accessible data: dashboards are made to be continuously updated with real-time information drawn from reliable sources to give executives a head start to draw valuable insights. Also, dashboards are often cloud-based which makes them accessible to all members of the organization.
- Give a 360° view of the company data: one of the main challenges that companies face is making sense of the large volumes of data from different sources. Dashboards solve this problem by presenting all relevant information in a single, user-friendly view. This neat organization helps businesses quickly analyze information and boosts efficiency.
- Facilitate sharing across the company: their accessibility and the broadness of their scope make dashboard an amazing way to enable cross-departmental collaboration within the company. They basically allow everyone to be on the same page and to work together towards the same goals.
What are the different types of dashboards?
Dashboards are not one size fits all; they should be carefully tailored to the goal that they serve and the audience that they address. Business executives that make use of dashboards include:
- C-suite executives: CEOs, CMOs, CFOs and other senior executives depend on insights extracted from dashboards to make strategic decisions about management, finances, or marketing strategies.
- Sales executives: Sales executives benefit from dashboards by viewing key customer metrics and unearthing information to implement robust sales strategies.
- Product executives: product executives monitor the success of their products via insightful product analytics dashboards, which show how the product is faring in terms of user acquisition, retention, engagement, etc.
- Marketers: dashboards enable marketers to have access to detailed information about funnel metrics such as user conversion and drop-off rates. B2Metric’s IQ dashboard is further powered by advanced capabilities such as performance marketing and push notifications.
What are the most important dashboard design principles?
There is a multitude of design principles to keep in mind when designing an effective analytics dashboard, the most important ones include:
- Considering the audience and their goals: the KPIs presented on the dashboard should be relevant to the audience, as presented in the previous section, and should provide answers that meet their goals.
- Presenting the data effectively: the visualizations that are used to present the data should be chosen carefully. For example, when comparing data, bar charts should be chosen, whereas when we want to show data over time, then time series are most suitable.
- Keeping the interface user-friendly: users should not only need but also enjoy using the dashboard. This is done by adopting a simple and intuitive interface, enabling interactive elements, and optimizing the interface to the device type.
What Do You Think of Custom Dashboards?
If you’re already a B2Metric user, try Custom Dashboards in your account. If not, sign up for an account to give the feature a spin.
Check out this video on how to use B2Metric’s Custom Dashboard:
Wrap-up
A well-thought-out analytics dashboard can be immensely valuable to your business by informing and driving insights across different departments.
To learn more about B2Metric, visit our website and read our blogs.
And this is just the beginning! Learn more about our product and its functionalities from our previous blogs!
The Intelligent Mobile Marketing Analytics Platform
See how today’s top brands use B2Metric to drive long-term growth and retention.
