What Makes a Good Dashboard?

A common problem between marketing teams and leadership is getting to a place where everyone feels good about how data is presented in a dashboard.

The VP or CMO isn't really in the weeds of marketing, let alone the CEO, so it is typical for them to want to push for more and more detail to be added to the dashboard. Before you know it, the dashboard is 4-5 screens with 30+ charts and it gets really noisy.

And from the marketing team's perspective, the amount of time it takes to build and update dashboards feels like a waste because it still doesn't provide all of the context that they have.

So how do you make a good dashboard that works for everyone and provides valuable insight?

Three Levels of Data

The best way to have a good marketing dashboard that gives everyone what they need is to follow a three-level approach.

Level One

The first level is the data that is actually represented on the dashboard. It should be 5-7 core metrics that can show the appropriate data to understand how things are progressing at a glance.

The dashboard level's primary function should be to give an executive a quick understanding of where to dig in or ask more questions.

So, the dashboard level (level one) should be heavily influenced by executives and what top-level markers they need to see, with input from marketing on what best represents overall performance.

Level Two

The second level should be more detailed data behind each of the 5-7 core metrics in the dashboards. The executives or anyone else should be able to click into the chart and see that metric, plus more data points, to gain more context.

For example, you may see on the chart that trial signups are down this month, so you can click in to see the trial signup data by country or channel, or plan type. Whatever makes the most sense for each metric.

This second level allows executives to gain more context without having to disrupt the team and wait for a response.

Level Three

The third level is the wealth of data that the folks doing the work in each area of marketing should be tracking on their own to do their job well.

Perhaps this also lives inside of the same data visualization tool, or maybe it is just a big Google Sheet with a lot of tabs. Regardless, those doing the work should always have the most detailed and granular data at their disposal and tracked over time to understand patterns.

This data should be used only by the marketers 90% of the time, yet the executives can know that it is there and available if there is a need to dig beyond levels one and two for better understanding.

Wrapping Up

Where most teams go wrong is that they (or their executives) want to put as much level three data on a dashboard as possible.

Work towards this three-level approach to provide simplicity and focus at the top level, while still having all of the detailed data necessary to grow.