BI Dashboards: Building and Designing Best Practices

Business Intelligence (BI) dashboards help companies achieve a better understanding of their data by compiling statistics into charts and graphs in an easy-to-read, intuitive layout.

However, BI dashboards are not just for data visualization. They’re also for ease of reporting and communicating information. The more organized your dashboard is, the easier it will be to read and understand the insights it provides.

In this article, we will walk step-by-step through best practices to ensure your BI dashboard is clean, concise, and easy on the eyes.

What is a business intelligence (BI) dashboard?

A Business Intelligence (BI) dashboard is a visualization tool that displays key business data in a centralized repository. It brings together multiple data sources into one location to help organizations view, track, and monitor key performance metrics. The data sources and metrics tracked will depend on the organization’s individual goals. 

Why build a BI dashboard?

Dashboards are helpful for organizations as they monitor lead generation, sales, marketing efforts, and more. The best BI tools allow anyone to make a dashboard, whether or not they are familiar with Excel or other data-gathering tools.

Dashboards offer a variety of data points to keep track of, including sales numbers, website traffic, or lead generation. They help users stay up-to-date with the most current information without having to compile multiple reports or dig through mountains of statistics.

A dashboard helps summarize the data you’re tracking into one cohesive display where you can spot general trends and patterns. Instead of having to look around for information from multiple tools, you can easily access it all in one place.

What to track in your BI dashboard?

Every company is different, and with that comes a unique set of data needs. You want to make sure you’re gathering all the right information. Otherwise, your dashboard will be full of numbers that may not be helping you in the way they should.

The data you keep track of will depend on your business goals, so the first thing to determine is what business question (or questions) you’re trying to answer. It’s important to focus on the most relevant information to you and what you are trying to achieve with your dashboard. 

BI dashboard best practices

Know Your Why

Start by identifying your requirements or the data you’re trying to collect. Ideally, these requirements will align with your high-level business initiatives in the short and long term. To help determine your “why” for building a dashboard, identify the purpose of building one. Is there a business related-challenge you are trying to overcome or a problem you’re trying to solve? Which data sources will you need to pull from to find the answers or solution? Are there specific metrics you’ll need to monitor in order to uncover insights to solve this problem or overcome this challenge? Helping to define your requirements will allow you to narrow down the purpose of your dashboard. The idea is to provide an intuitive, easy to use interface. So, you want a focused view, instead of a cluttered, hard-to-decipher display of numbers to follow best practices.

Know your audience

Now that you know why, it’s time to determine your “who,” or target audience. Focus on the following questions:

• Who will be using this dashboard?  
• What are their goals and objectives in using the dashboard?
• What information will be most useful for them?
• Which data sources do they already use?
• Are there goals, objectives, or KPIs they are currently working on?

These questions will help you tailor each BI dashboard to your target audience, their needs, goals, and expectations. As you tailor your dashboard to these audiences, be sure to consider cadence. How often will each target audience consult their dashboard (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly). 

Determine your data sources

Next, consider where you will pull your information from, or your data sources. You likely have multiple internal and external data sources that you work with. A BI dashboard is the key to converting these multiple sources into one, easy-to-access visualization tool. But remember, your dashboards should be customized for best results. So, select the data sources that reflect your BI dashboard’s purpose and target audience. 

Bringing in irrelevant data sources will bring unnecessary information in your dashboard, which can lead to visual clutter and confusion. Likewise, use verified data sources. Otherwise, you could bring in accurate data and inconsistencies. Your team will make decisions based on the data you use so always prioritize accuracy, quality, and consistency. 

Lean on data connectors and integrators to automate the collection and updating of data. That way, you don’t have to do everything manually and can rest easy knowing the data is up-to-date in real-time. 

Work from the top down

Even simple dashboards can be a bit overwhelming for new users. To help them get comfortable with using these visualization tools, start from the top down. By that we mean, begin with the most important information first. Follow an inverted pyramid structure by putting that key information at the top. 

Why? Your ultimate goal is to help users accomplish their goals in a timely fashion. Cluttered, unstructured information is hard to digest and even more difficult to interpret. In simple terms, the user won’t know where to work. If your substantial, critical data is toward the bottom of the dashboard or tucked away on the sides, the user may get frustrated and move on before they even see it. 

So, put your most important information at the top, preferably in the upper left corner. That is where people spend most of their time looking for information naturally. Layer details in the middle of the page and save the bottom sections, particularly the right corner for background information. 

That way, you can ensure that users get the information they need from the top. As they dive into the information, they can supplement their knowledge with details and background information to round out their understanding. 

Make your chart easy to understand

Now that you have the page structured correctly, consider how to make your dashboard as visually appealing as possible. There are even more best practices to follow when building your BI dashboard to make it as easy to navigate as possible. 

• Label each section clearly so users know what they are viewing.
• Use size, color, and spacing to order each element of the dashboard.
• Less is more; avoid adding unnecessary visual elements.
• Place key information and data in the upper left corner of the dashboard. 
• Consistently align elements; avoid diagonal elements and fill patterns. 
• Lean on white space to break up and balance information.
• Leverage constant to emphasize information and provide detail. 
• Stick to simple colors and design elements.

Ultimately, you want the dashboards to be an overview of key information. From there, people can drill down on information as needed. If you present the information in a clear and easily digestible format, users will be able to uncover insights and refine their strategies based on those insights. 

Consider screen sizes

What devices will your users use to access the dashboards? While you might assume they’ll be using their work laptops to do so, consider on-the-go use on smartphones or tablets. Users may want to pull up metrics or charts quickly before a meeting or while traveling for work. So, optimize the dashboards for each of these devices as applicable. You’ll need them to be designed for each device type. Consider that you’ll need to again keep the most important information at the top and will have less space to display this information on a smartphone or tablet than a laptop. Make sure users can easily click on buttons and zoom in, no matter the device type. 

Allow users to interact with the dashboards

Definitely plan for training sessions to get users up to speed on how to use the BI dashboards. These training sessions should be tailored to the users, their goals, and cadence of use. As you develop the sessions, remember to leave time for users to explore and ask questions. They will develop their comfort level with the dashboards the more they explore them and have time to experiment. 

If you have a BI tool that allows you to use live data in your dashboards for real-time updates, consider giving users an interactive chart where they can toggle between views, add and remove filters, and discover new information at their own pace. Keeping this kind of functionality quick and simple will help to avoid overwhelming users. 

Likewise, follow best practices when including interactive elements. There are three core filters to include in your BI dashboards:

• Drill down: Allow users to get deeper contextual information through drill down filters. They help users see low levels of data in hierarchical manner. Users can continue to drill down and expand information as needed. The beauty of this filter is that it expands as needed so extra data is not automatically displayed and cluttering up the dashboard at first glance. 

• Drill through: Users can also get more information with drill through filters. This filter displays this information with a “pop-up” that appears on the page. As with drill down filters, the data is tucked away until the user accesses it to keep things tidy. 
• Click-to-filter: Use a click-to-filter to filter an entire dashboard based on a given graph on the visualization chart. This filter provides excellent content and perspective for users.
  

Include historical data

Historical data is data about past events and circumstances. It can help provide context about information and indicates trends as well as progress. Your users want to understand if metrics are tracking in the right direction. Historical data can help them make sense of that. 

Include dates and time frames to deliver that context. It’s important to label axes, columns, rows, charts, graphs, and legends. 

Allow for white labeling

We know customization is key. That’s why it’s important to allow for white labeling on your dashboard. With white labeling, users can customize their dashboards by changing the fonts, colors, and logos. You may want to create a theme that reflects your organization’s brand or users may want to customize the dashboards to reflect their departments. 

Dashboards can be a powerful way to gather and present information that’s important for your business. By using the tips in this article, you’ll have an easier time building your dashboard, so it will be more effective and customized to your audience.

There are a variety of tools that you can use to create your dashboard — from basic spreadsheets to advanced BI platforms.

By creating effective dashboards, you’ll be able to better visualize and share your company’s most critical information. This will enable you to make smarter business decisions, improve how your team shares information, and act on data more quickly than ever before.