For most business owners, the idea of a data dashboard seems overwhelming.
It might bring to mind a whole lot of numbers to collect or spreadsheet formulas to figure out.
Then, once you pull in all your business stats, what if you’re not sure what your numbers are saying and you’re just more confused?? This is a concern many small, online business owners have — and I want to change that.
Here, I want to share what a data dashboard really is and how you can get started with three of the most beneficial ones. Keep reading (or watch the video below) if you want tips on how to visualize your business data so you can make better decisions and grow in the direction you want.
Prefer video? We've got you covered!
What is a data dashboard?
A data dashboard is one of my most recommended tool for online business owners.
Especially in the online space, we’re dealing with data and numbers constantly.
We’re told to look out for this KPI and that metric. It can be quite the rabbit hole if we don’t have a way to organize and understand it.
Data dashboards will organize and display the most important information so that, at a glance, you have everything you need to inform your decisions and strategies.
Another piece of their power is their ability to provide instantaneous, up-to-date information.
You can access data very quickly after it is captured, allowing you to make real-time decisions like never before. Not only does this provide you with total transparency into what’s happening behind the scenes of your business, but correctly utilizing data dashboards will allow you to accurately forecast business performance!
The 3 data dashboards every online business needs to succeed
Are you wondering how dashboards can help your business, or which kinds of dashboards you should create? As a Certified Dashboard Designer, I’ve helped many entrepreneurs build out data dashboards for their businesses, and there are 3 dashboards I’ve found to work well time and time again for growing business owners ready to dominate their data.
1. Traffic dashboards
I absolutely love building out traffic dashboards. After all… there’s no business without traffic, right? We need to know who makes up our audience and where they’re coming from in order to continuously improve our services to meet their needs!
This is about so much more than simply looking at your page views over a month-long period. Traffic dashboards allow you to do an in-depth analysis to see where and how your traffic is reaching you.
If you’re running paid ads to your website and also trying to optimize organic traffic, you can use your traffic dashboard to discern which strategy is working better and why.
You’ll know how long people are staying on your site, whether or not they’re clicking through to view other pages, and where they end up leaving. This can provide valuable information that will help you optimize your site to improve bounce rates and keep visitors staying on longer!
Traffic dashboards, depending on your needs, can show you:
- Source of traffic
- Time on page
- Keywords and referral sources
- Bounce rate
- Demographics and location of traffic
- And more
2. Marketing dashboards
Since marketing is such an integral part of any online business, it’s incredibly important to know which of your marketing efforts are actually moving the needle and leading to increased conversions on your website.
You can monitor your campaigns and marketing efforts in real-time, which allows you to make tweaks and optimizations to your copy, funnel, and strategy. No more waiting three months to figure out if your marketing strategy is working!
Instead, you’ll be able to track your metrics across all of your platforms and make informed, data-driven decisions.
Depending on how your business is structured, your marketing dashboard might include:
- Landing page traffic and conversions
- Product page traffic and conversions
- Sales funnel conversions and revenue
- Lead funnels and conversions
- And more
3. Sales dashboards
Similar to your marketing dashboard, I believe every business should have a sales dashboard that they can reference at any time.
Sales data can become convoluted to track, especially when you utilize multiple platforms and payment gateways, and creating one source of truth for your sales can be a game-changer.
Some of the most important metrics to track are:
- Revenue brought in per product
- Overall monthly revenue and how it changes over time
- Refunds
- Average order value
- Average lifetime customer value
If you’re anything like me, a visual dashboard will help you best when tracking these metrics. They’ll help inform you of patterns and allow you to make changes in order to increase your revenue.
Even if you’re not a numbers person, you can still have an easy-to-analyze sales dashboard! You don’t have to understand calculus and statistics for this tool to work. Instead, you just need a dashboard that works FOR YOU (and any financial people you have on your team, like a bookkeeper).
Take your business to the next level with custom dashboards!
Now that you know what a data dashboard is and which ones you should use in your business, it’s time to take the next steps to use them in your business.
If you’d like a custom dashboards to display your business’ numbers, that’s where I come in! I can help you strategize and create custom data dashboards unique to your situation.
We can discuss all the details and my services in-depth during an introductory call!
If you’re ready to tackle tracking these numbers on your own, then I’ve got one bit of advice for you: just start. You won’t know what works for your business until you know what doesn’t work!
