Our great support expert, Ray Light, wrote the 5 tips after helping our users with hundreds of reports and dashboards. Thanks Ray!

The trend toward deeper and deeper analytics to measure business performance has resulted in a slew of tools for creating dashboards. Many of these tools are quite sophisticated and have the ability to produce stunning visuals relatively quickly. While these tools have empowered some, we have also seen examples that would be improved if they hadn’t existed in the first place.

This short guide aims to present simple tips to help anyone create compelling dashboards. Compelling dashboards do more than just look nice/hi-tech/artistic/etc. We try to present “compelling” as dashboards that convey meaning, increase understanding, provoke thought and spur action. Here is the tip #1:

1. Know What You Want to Say

This simple idea seems like a no-brainer, but it’s not hard to find examples of dashboards containing mixed messages. These types of dashboards convey weak or no meaning. If the interpretation lies in the eye of the beholder, the dashboard has failed.

Consider the following example:

Here we see a dashboard titled Sales History. In the line graph on the left, we see sales by product vertical, while on the right, we see a list of the top five sales reps. These divergent reports, while sales related, provide little actionable information to the viewer. Working backwards, it’s difficult to determine what the dashboard creator is trying to say here.

In this second example, we see the beginnings of a much more interesting story.

The line chart on the left shows a simplified gross sales figure, while the bar chart on the right breaks down those sales numbers into different opportunity size tiers. Here the data are related, and showing different levels of granularity, from a summary on the left, to more detailed information on the right.

Notice that Sales Rep report was removed from this dashboard completely. That’s not to say that this information isn’t important; just that this information is likely better placed in a separate dashboard dealing explicitly with rep performance.

The following questions help test your dashboard for compliance with Tip #1:

• What am I trying to say?
• Does each element on the dashboard reinforce my overall message?
• Is each piece relevant?
• Will the consumer be able to draw the appropriate conclusions?

Do you keep your dashboards simple? Do you have some other tips? Let us know!