What is a Business Dashboard?

A Business Dashboard is a visual representation of your company’s performance in real-time. A sample image of such a dashboard is below:

Why Do Business Dashboards Dramatically Improve a Company’s Success?

There are three key reasons a business dashboard allows companies to successfully grow sales and profits.

1. Total Visibility into Your Business

With a dashboard, you know exactly what’s going on in your business at all times. You know what’s working and what’s not working. For instance, your dashboard could show you exactly how your last email blast to your customers performed. You’ll know how many new leads came into your system today. You’ll know if there are problems in customer service, marketing, sales, production and/or any other areas of your business. You will never be blindsided.

2. Massively Increased Employee Productivity

Dashboards allow you to measure performance numerically. For instance, your customer service manager could see metrics such as the return rate, the average speed of answering phone calls, etc. Importantly, when they see their performance measured, and are accountable for their results, they’ll work much harder to improve their performance and results. You’ll see performance improvements from sales people, marketing managers, and everyone else in your organization when you start tracking their results in a dashboard.

3. Improved Focus

Bob Parson’s, the founder of GoDaddy, said it best when he quipped, “Measure everything of significance. Anything that is measured and watched, improves.” The fact is that when you see your key metrics in your dashboard, you intuitively start improving your results.

Also, dashboard shows you what’s working and not working in your business. This allows you to spend your time fixing key problems and doing more of what’s already working. Conversely, your competitors probably don’t know this, and thus spend their time in the wrong areas. By knowing precisely what’s working in your business and what’s not, it’s simple to increase both sales and profits.

How Do You Maintain a Dashboard?

If you maintain a dashboard in a spreadsheet, you’re ahead of the game. However, this old school method of tracking metrics has several downfalls including the time it takes your team to compile their metrics, mistakes in data entry, lack of timeliness of the data, and the inability to easily share the information.

Conversely, digital dashboards are now available the connect with all your systems (e.g., website analytics, CRM, online advertising systems, social media platforms, etc.) to pull in your metrics in real time.

What Metrics Should You Include in Your Dashboard?

Below are several examples of metrics and metrics categories you should include in your dashboard.

Sample Financial Performance Dashboard Chart

Here are some other charts to consider:	With this data at your fingertips, you’ll discover:
Profit margins Daily/weekly/monthly cash balance Accounts receivable vs. accounts payable And many more…	What your profits are in real-time Whether you are performing better or worse than planned If your current and expected cash balances are sufficient

Sample Revenue Dashboard Chart

Here are some other charts to consider:	With this data at your fingertips, you’ll discover:
Sales by product/service Sales by affiliate and/or channel Monthly sales trends And many more…	How your revenues are trending Which days had strong sales (do more of what you did then) vs weak sales (focus on fixing) Which products/services are selling best

Sample Conversion Funnel Dashboard Charts

Here are some other charts to consider:	With this data at your fingertips, you’ll discover:
Conversion Funnels for multiple offerings Conversion Funnel results by traffic source Upsell and downsell conversions And many more…	How your conversion funnel is performing How every piece of your funnel is performing by month and by day Exactly what part of your funnels to fix to instantly improve conversions and profits

Sample Website Dashboard Charts

Here are some other charts to consider:	With this data at your fingertips, you’ll discover:
Website visitors by traffic source Top keywords referring traffic Top referring websites And many more…	How well your website is performing How to most easily get more traffic Where to improve your website to boost sales and profits

Sample Advertising Dashboard Chart

Here are some other charts to consider:	With this data at your fingertips, you’ll discover:
The number of leads generated by advertising Your cost per-lead (by advertising source) Advertising expenses, as a percentage of sales	Which advertising is effective and which is not What advertising sources directly lead to sales How to maximize advertising profits

Sample Email Marketing Dashboard Chart

Here are some other charts to consider:	With this data at your fingertips, you’ll discover:
Email open rates and click-through rates Email unsubscribe rates Revenue generated per-email or per-click	How to generate more sales from emails Which emails are performing/which are not Your optimum frequency for sending emails

Sample Social Media Dashboard Chart

Here are some other charts to consider:	With this data at your fingertips, you’ll discover:
Facebook fan engagement Number of Twitter followers Traffic to your website from social media Leads and sales generated from social media And many more…	How to make social media more effective Which social media efforts result in sales What’s being said about you on social media Performance on YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media channels

Sample Sales Team Dashboard Charts

Here are some other charts to consider:	With this data at your fingertips, you’ll discover:
# of leads and proposals, per salesperson Salesperson closing percentages Sales by lead source	How to improve sales Which sales people aren’t performing and why Which lead sources are most effective

Sample Customer Service Dashboard Chart

Here are some other charts to consider:	With this data at your fingertips, you’ll discover:
Amount of monthly refunds Average handle time of inbound calls Number of emails/calls processed	How to improve customer satisfaction Ways to reduce refunds Whether your customer service processes are effective

Sample Product/Service Fulfillment Dashboard Chart

Here are some other charts to consider:	With this data at your fingertips, you’ll discover:
Number of services performed/products manufactured On-time completion percentage And many more…	How to improve your operations Whether you are effectively fulfilling customer orders What new staffing might be required and when