Every dashboard is unique—but many fall into one of four categories based on their intended purpose and audience. Each one has a different focus that allows you to tell a story more effectively, and highlight the KPIs that matter to your business.
A hospital group that serves a large geographic area in Northwest England, UHMB uses data-driven insights to support a desire for better systems.
The Executive KPI dashboard provides UHMB teams with a view of the most current data, allowing them to evaluate progress on key goals and objectives, improve clinical and operational experiences, and develop means to improve management, patient experience, and staff dynamics.
Operational dashboards are a very common type of dashboard. They’re used to monitor the current condition and present information in a simple, easy-to-view format that everyone can understand. These KPI dashboards aren’t designed for interactivity or to demonstrate progress toward a goal, but rather to provide a snapshot of the way things are now.
Based in England, the Avon & Somerset Police Force provides lifesaving services to their community.
The force uses the Operational KPI dashboard as a daily tool to monitor crime, track the location and volume of police reports, and provide a snapshot of incidents teams should be prepared to deal with.
A tactical dashboard is used to track progress toward a goal, whether on a company-wide level or for a particular team or project. Interactivity is key for this type of dashboard, as you want to be able to determine why something is or isn’t going well. They help teams determine if what they’re doing is working—and if they need to make changes.
Celebrus is a software vendor that specializes in customer intelligence. They wanted a simple, uncluttered dashboard to help their business users make faster, better informed decisions.
Celebrus designed their Tactical KPI dashboards to allow users to drill down into trends, discover key insights around the customer journey, and identify new customer targets based on behavior patterns.
An analytical dashboard contains a vast amount of data created and used by analysts to provide support to executives. Analytics dashboards supply a comprehensive overview of business data and middle management is a crucial part of the user group. These dashboards are used to drive decisions and play a key role in the business.
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) are items purchased by everyday consumers. In such a competitive market, it’s crucial to have an analytical dashboard that illuminates exactly what, where, and when people are spending.
CPG companies use analytics dashboards to forecast market share growth, apply historical data to track trends, and create smart comparisons to track the market against goals.
When you invest the time to create KPI dashboard templates that are visually exciting and relevant, it helps everyone in the business...
If your organization is like most, it has mountains of unorganized data. Visual dashboards provide a navigable structure and help ensure that the right people in your organization understand what the data means for them.
Want to get executive buy-in on a particular project? Identify a new area of business based on trends? Easily spot problem areas? A KPI dashboard can help you rally key stakeholders across the business and respond quickly to ever-changing needs.
Sharing a KPI dashboard across business units can help drive data literacy in your company, creating a culture of discovery and innovation, and enabling employees at every level to drive competitive edge. When you have trustworthy and organized data, you can rely on it to make smarter, faster decisions.
When creating a KPI dashboard template, you'll want to be clear about your audience, what they want, and how they’re going to use the information presented to them.
Knowing who your dashboard is for—a generalist, an analyst, a business manager, or an executive—will help you design it effectively. For instance, an executive audience wants to know if KPIs are being met, and gather key takeaways. Whereas a salesperson with little technical or subject matter expertise might need a simplified display that provides key customer insights or shows sales figures over time.
In what context will your audience view the dashboard? A busy supervisor with 15 seconds to spare has different needs than a team that needs to dive deeper into quarterly numbers. Either way, it’s crucial to understand the situation. Your goal is to deliver accurate information that doesn’t cause unnecessary frustration or require outside intervention.
People are busier than ever, so you want to provide information they can quickly understand. Pay attention to the order of your content; put the high-priority items first. Use color and font size to draw attention to things you want your audiences to remember. Put the less relevant or lower-priority items near the end. If possible, provide takeaways or summaries.
Designing a dashboard is about more than just making something look nice—it’s about using data to tell a story that helps your audience get what they need. Any data-driven dashboard must follow a few key design principles that add clarity and signal intent.
Implement visual cues that indicate when an element links to another page, shows whether a button is active or inactive, or provides contextual information.
Some people have a limited range of color vision, so it’s important to incorporate shapes and contrast to ensure that everyone can access the information they need.
Show data in the order of importance, so users won’t miss what matters most. “F-scanning” is a common way people consume information—essentially, they scan horizontally across the page, and then down. Understanding more about this and other common scanning patterns can help you put what’s most relevant first.
A cluttered dashboard might show a lot of information—but it’s useless if those looking at it don’t understand what they’re seeing. Less is more, so avoid confusing 3-D graphics or cramming too much on a page.
Key Performance Indicators can be complex, so it’s important to know how to work with them to produce the best results. As you use KPIs in a dashboard, you’ll want to:
Collaborate with stakeholders in your team or project to identify the exact metrics that will help you align behaviors, drive strategy, and track success. For example, a sales team that is rewarded based on year-over-year growth cares about a different number than teams rewarded on the basis of net sales. Not sure if you’ve chosen correctly? Test it out and look at the data.
What’s the big idea you want to convey? What are the key KPIs your business cares about? Use information hierarchy to guide the reader along. For instance, if the big story is this year’s customer growth, showcase it with large numbers, and use smaller numbers to indicate the prior year.
When it comes to KPIs, you can’t “set it and forget it.” Defining the right metrics is an ever-evolving task. For instance, when a big competitor enters the market, or when customer behavior shifts, your KPIs may need to change too.
Congrats—you’re ready to create a beautiful KPI dashboard! But before you share it with your audience:
After you share your dashboard:
Learn how to create the best dashboard and how to evaluate dashboard software.
