How To Design a Dashboard for Your Business

Business dashboard makes it easy to get at-a-glance status of your business and draw insights from data. Here are the key tips to help you design a dashboard for your business, and make better decisions.

How To Design a Dashboard

Here are the steps to design a dashboard.

1. Determine the purpose of a dashboard

First of all, determine why you are building a dashboard.

Is it to create a unified source of information from various data sources? Is it to monitor day-to-day operational KPIs? Is it to discover new insights?

Once you understand why you need a dashboard, you will be clear about what you need to display in it.

Bonus Read : Key Dashboard Design Principles for Successful Dashboards

2. Speak to the end Users

One of the best ways to design a dashboard is to simply understand user requirements and deliver it to them. Find out

Who will you use your dashboard?
How will it help them?
How frequently will they use your dashboard?
How will they access your dashboard? via mobile, desktop, as PDF, as spreadsheet?
What information are they looking for in your dashboard?

Once you have a clear idea about your target audience, you can design a dashboard that meets your requirements.

Bonus Read : Top 5 Retail KPIs & Metrics to Monitor

3. Follow the 5-second rule

The best dashboards allow users to get insights and answer questions within 5 seconds. So make sure that your dashboards are easy to understand, contain only required information that is well-organized.

Bonus Read : What Makes a Good KPI Dashboard

4. Use a Logical Layout

It is important to organize your dashboard widgets in a logical layout so that users can easily understand all the information present in it.

Organize your information in 3 layers – the most important and urgent numbers & graphs at the top, trends & comparisons in the middle, and granular data at the bottom.

Here’s an example of an easy to understand dashboard created using Ubiq.

5. Use Up to 10 Visualizations

Use only up to 10 visualizations on your dashboards. Otherwise, it will clutter your dashboard and make it difficult for users to spot otherwise obvious insights.

Each visualization contains a lot of colors, numbers & texts. This can be quite distracting for users.

Similarly, pick 3-4 colors and use them for all visualizations on your dashboard. This will make your dashboard look consistent.

Bonus Read : Top 5 Project Management KPIs & metrics

6. Use the Right Data Visualization

Choose the right type of visualization for each KPI metric. Each type of visualization serves a specific purpose. If you use the wrong visualization, it might confuse or even misguide users. Here’s an example. In which of the following visualization, is it easy to spot sales trend.