The perfect dashboard – 5 tips from practice

As a billing service provider, we are used to looking at a lot of numbers every day. However, it is also important for the company’s success to interpret these figures correctly. To support our customers in this process, we offer a visualization of the data for a better evaluation of his figures and data.

We have been using Tableau software for this data visualization for many years. With the BI tool we create professional reports for our customers, so that you can optimize your products and analyze the buying behavior of your own customers or get a regional evaluation of the payment behavior. These visualizations and evaluations result in a lot of information for business intelligence. But also the marketing department of our customers benefits from the countless possibilities of these reports. Here are 5 tips and tricks for the perfect dashboard.

1. know the target group

Already at the creation stage it is important to know who will read the reporting later. Is it the financial analyst who has the desire and time to delve into the numbers, or is it the salesperson who just wants to take a quick look? The analyst needs a lot of detailed information and evaluation options, while the salesperson only wants to briefly check the sales figures. You should also know what expertise your target audience has. Are additional explanations or tooltips perhaps needed to help the viewer understand the dashboard?

2. pay attention to the display size

Are your dashboard users primarily mobile with smartphone or tablet? Then it is advisable to also orient the dashboard to these display sizes. For extensive tables with detailed information, the viewer has to scroll and zoom a lot. You probably won’t bring much joy to the viewer. In this case, focus on the essentials and try to summarize data.

3. speed is important

If you just want to take a look at the current figures, you don’t want to stare at an hourglass or loading bars for ages. Therefore, it is important to keep the dashboard lean and visualize only relevant and always needed data there. Extracts from the database are often much faster than live data, which may not always be necessary.

4. encourage interactivity

Provide interactive options so your users can customize the dashboard based on their preferences. Filters, sort orders and the most important views can be used and combined individually. This way, your users will have more fun and are likely to use your dashboard more.

5. use tooltips

Tooltips are a great way to provide your users with more information at a glance. If the user hovers his mouse over a field, additional or aggregated information can be displayed in a small pop-up. Invest some time in fleshing out these tooltips. Your users will thank you for it.