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September 20, 2019
Mieke Houbrechts
How to improve the effectiveness of dashboards for clients or colleagues? Here are 5 tips you can start applying straight away!
A secure business dashboard integration is one of the most visible component of any self-service analytics suite. In many apps or portals, this is one of the first landing pages your target audience views when accessing the portal. Remember when they say, the first impression always lasts? Well, for a lot of users, an unplanned or distorted dashboard fails to impress or captivate them.
A dashboard can be defined as a simple form of communication to give an overview of a company’s essential information by using visualizations. It is highly fundamental to keep track of the effectiveness of your dashboards. You must ensure that they are carefully planned and can be used to ensure business progress and to track the goals accomplished.
It is important to constantly review and apply strategies to ensure you’re getting the most out of your dashboards. If you want to keep the usage of your dashboards high, and the bounce rate low, then here are 5 strategies to improve and upgrade the effectiveness of your dashboards.
Your viewers are looking for a dashboard that gives them an idea of the overall business. So why not have all the information in a single view? One of the top strategies is to use the integrated ETL – Extract, Transform, Load tool and to standardize information from a variety of sources while preparing the dashboard.
This option allows you to have all the information from your logistics, marketing, sales, and finance in a single dashboard. Remember, your audience is looking for something that fulfills their demand as well as takes a minimum of their time. Making use of a business intelligence tool on top of these multiple data points will open gates of opportunities for your business growth like never before.
This way, you can even check the health of your organization altogether. How well your business is doing, whether your insights or positive or negative – at just one glance.
What type of screen does your audience prefer to use the dashboard on? Mobile, laptop, desktop, tablet, or basically all of the above? Once you have the answer at hand, you can easily determine whether you are working at the right size or your dashboard needs a little upgrade.
One strategy to find this out is through a feedback survey. While you are planning how to improve the effectiveness of your metrics dashboards, you can conduct a quick survey. For example, use social media channels, Instagram Story polls, or survey tools such as Leadquizzes to check what type of screen your audience prefers the dashboard on.
A good solution is to maintain a responsive dashboard. Regardless of which device your users are using, the dashboard will fit the screen size decently. You can add interactive and cool features like menu filters, graphics, gifs, animated videos and much more. In addition, adaptability per screen mode adds a lot to your dashboard’s attractiveness, so it’s always a good idea to add this strategy into the design process.
Instead of overwhelming your users with too much content & statistics on your dashboard, let your dashboard connect directly with your audience. Include only key figures that matter the most to them & your bounce rate is guaranteed to decrease.
While a regular KPI template works incredibly well, if you are looking to go the extra mile, allowing drill-down data will be the strategy here. A comprehensive, top-level view is quite crucial to the dashboard. On top of that, drilling down will provide more detailed information to your users. Imagine your viewer feels captivated at first glance, but now they want to know more? That’s where drill-downs step in.
Some people often ask why things are the way they are. In such cases, drill downs allow space for filling in details and curiosities at a granular level. The breakdown displays company information driving your metrics – giving a complete idea about your business and where each level of your company stands.
Viewers prefer knowledge available at hand as they open multiple tabs searching through plenty of information. To keep your stakeholders close, it is essential to go the extra mile and improve the overall effectiveness of your dashboards.
If you are looking to improve the effectiveness of your applications of business intelligence, it’s good to keep the basic user experience criteria in mind. Let’s take a quick look into it. If your dashboard does not follow these basic principles yet, this is the best starting point to start improving your dashboards.
People start scanning a dashboard from the upper left corner of the screen. Make sure this area has all the essential information you want your viewers to focus on. When people scroll for more information, they often consider it less important than what they usually see. Try not to exceed normal page length: if your design team is putting more metrics below the fold of a page, it might not be worth it.
Human memory only stores up to seven items. In regard to this, more than eight menu items into your dashboard might be too much information to process. Ensure you attract the user but in the respectfully right technique.
One of the basic strategies is to connect with your users in a way that they relate with you. Your users won’t be able to make any sense of the information if they don’t know what they are looking for. So, make sure you label everything on your dashboard in a correct & clear way. Give a clear name to all your cloud metrics and add descriptive titles to your visualizations.
Add some basic legends explaining the importance of a particular color or any other symbol into diagrams. Besides being coherent and descriptive, make sure every label is legit and accurate. The sans-serif fonts are often best in this regard as they are simple & easy to read. Fonts play a huge role in connecting, thus make it readable with high resolutions.
Once the font is readable and user-friendly along with labeling on the dashboard, you can improve your dashboard’s interface and deliver messages more effectively.
Regardless of whether you are building your dashboard from the start or upgrading it to improve your overall business effectiveness, these strategies are must-haves for your business. Your selected dashboard might not allow all these functionalities yet. However, you can always look for improvements, to make it fit your business needs perfectly.
According to an article by Forbes, an effective dashboard makes business storytelling easier. One way or another, you are free to apply the strategies that best fit your business. Just keep in mind that minimalism is always the way to go. A good dashboard enables workers to track KPIs without risking loss of valuable time or being overwhelmed.
If you spend enough time planning and executing a valuable dashboard, your team will save a lot of time afterwards to focus on more important things, such as customer experience and retention, growth, and revenue. We have listed down the top ideas for you to maintain a good balance between growth and success.
When looking for an intuitive business metrics dashboard editor, make sure to select a tool that matches your needs & requirements. Business intelligence tools like Luzmo allow you to easily create dashboards, with enough customization options to ensure your distinctive business identity.
Experience the power of Luzmo. Talk to our product experts for a guided demo or get your hands dirty with a free 10-day trial.
