A good dashboard answers one question in under ten seconds: is the business on track, and if not, where? Most dashboards fail because they show everything instead of the few numbers that drive decisions.
Start with decisions, not data
Before choosing charts, list the decisions you make every week. For example: "Should we increase ad spend?", "Which salesperson needs help?", "Do we need to reorder stock?" Every number on the dashboard should help answer one of them.
KPIs worth tracking
Marketing
- Cost per lead and cost per customer by channel
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Leads by source, including organic search, ads, social and referrals
- Landing page conversion rate
Sales
- Lead-to-customer rate and speed to first contact
- Pipeline value by stage
- Average deal size and sales cycle length
Revenue and operations
- Monthly revenue vs target, with last month and last year for context
- Gross margin
- Repeat customer rate or churn
- Fulfilment time or open tickets, depending on your business
Vanity metrics to skip (or keep off the front page)
Impressions, followers, total page views and "time on site" rarely change a decision on their own. Keep them in a detail tab if you like, but don't let them crowd the headline numbers.
Where the data comes from
Most businesses already have the data. It's just spread across tools: Google Ads and Meta Ads, Google Analytics, your CRM (HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce), your store (Shopify, WooCommerce), accounting software and spreadsheets. A custom dashboard connects them, refreshes automatically and applies the same definitions everywhere.
Common mistakes
- Too many charts. Aim for 6 to 10 headline numbers.
- No targets. A number without a goal or comparison doesn't tell you anything.
- Different definitions. Agree what counts as a "lead" or "customer" before you build.
- Manual updates. If someone has to paste data in, it will go stale.
- No alerts. The best dashboards message you when a number moves sharply.
Get your numbers in one place
Our Custom Dashboards service connects your ads, CRM, store and finance tools into live dashboards in Looker Studio, Power BI or a custom web app, with automated reports and alerts. Tag your campaigns properly first with the free UTM Link Builder so every lead has a source.