Examples, benefits, and best practices. This guide provides practical advice to help you create world-class analytics dashboards of your own.
An analytics dashboard is an interactive graphical user interface that allows you to display, track, and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics. Modern dashboards can combine real-time data from multiple sources and provide AI-assisted data preparation, chart creation, and analysis. In this way, analytics dashboards turn raw data into insights that improve your business.
A web analytics dashboard is a specialized type of dashboard used to monitor and analyze the performance of your website. It provides a visual representation of key metrics and data related to your website's traffic, user behavior, and overall effectiveness. This information helps you make informed decisions about content strategy, user experience improvements, and marketing efforts aimed at increasing traffic and conversions.
Click the dashboard to explore
This type of dashboard, similar to a Google Analytics dashboard, typically includes information such as:
This type of custom dashboard, available in a modern data analytics or business intelligence platform, brings together data from multiple systems to let you close the loop between marketing campaigns and revenue. This helps you to optimize your digital marketing budget and efforts, such as Google Ads and SEO, based on what’s actually driving revenue, not just activity on your website.
Overall, an analytics dashboard transforms Google Analytics data and other raw data sets into actionable insights, ultimately leading to more informed decision-making and improved business outcomes. Here are the four key benefits of any modern, well-designed dashboard.
Improved Decision-MakingAnalytical dashboards centralize data from various sources, providing a unified and easily accessible view. This eliminates the need to manually gather and analyze data, saving time and ensuring accuracy.
Real-time InsightsThe best tools can access live data, providing you real-time monitoring and analysis of key performance metrics. This timely information enables quick reactions to changing situations and helps in staying ahead of trends.
Increased CollaborationDashboards promote teamwork and collaboration by offering a shared platform for viewing and discussing data. Teams can work together towards common goals, aligning efforts based on the insights provided by the dashboard.
Here we describe the three types of data analytics dashboards. Each type serves a distinct purpose–catering to different levels of management and addressing specific timeframes and scopes of decision-making.
1) Operational DashboardsClick the dashboard to explore
This dashboard helps you find operational efficiencies by visualizing the details of plant operations, comparing actuals against standards for important KPIs. More operational dashboards.
2) Strategic DashboardsClick the dashboard to explore
This strategic dashboard helps executives track key leverage ratios such as debt-to-equity (D/E) and thereby better understand the company's risk profile and ability to service its debt obligations. More financial analysis dashboards.
3) Tactical DashboardsThis tactical dashboard lets the marketing team know how their efforts impact pipeline creation and revenue using accurate campaign attribution. More marketing dashboards.
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Adhering to best practices will ensure that your business analytics dashboard is purposeful, user-friendly, and capable of delivering valuable insights to support informed decision-making. Here are a few best practices to consider as you build your own.
Setting ObjectivesHere are three common challenges associated with creating an analytics dashboard and how to overcome them.
Data Accuracy and IntegritySee how to explore information and quickly gain insights.
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