- In this video, I'm gonna give you five tips
on how you can build better dashboards.
All the more coming up, right after this.
(upbeat electronic music)
Hi there, and welcome to another video of measureschool.com
where we teach you the data driven way of digital marketing.
My name is Julian,
and on this video I'm gonna give you five tips
on how you can build better dashboards.
This occurred to me when I did the
Data Studio tutorial the other day,
I was explaining a lot about the feature set of the tool,
but really when you build dashboards,
you need to take some things into consideration,
to build an effective dashboard that actually communicates
the right message to your audience.
So in this video, I want to go through some steps
that can help you to build better dashboards,
before you actually implement them into the tool.
We've got lots to cover, so let's get started.
Number one, know your audience.
So before you start building a dashboard
you should be thinking about who is this actually for?
The dashboard itself is a distillation
of different metrics, different data points,
into a more confined, simplistic way of presenting data.
So if you are building this dashboard
for your boss, for a colleague,
or just for yourself to explore the data by yourself,
then you should be thinking about who is this actually for,
and is the data that I'm gonna present
relevant to this target audience?
This will tremendously help you
to shift your dashboard in the right direction,
and transport the right message to the right audience.
Number two, get your story straight.
Now a dashboard is probably there for communication,
you want to inform somebody, you want to convince somebody,
or you want to enable them
to explore the data by themselves.
Now this message that you want to send
is an important part of a dashboard,
and you should be thinking about it beforehand.
So what's important when you communicate your message
with a dashboard, is to stay on point, stick with the story,
so you need to have a story that your data actually tells.
So think about, for example, when you go into a meeting
and go through the data with your target audience,
what talking points would you have,
how would you explain that data,
and how would the data support your story?
There are many different techniques for storytelling,
and even data storytelling,
and there's a great video by Daniel Waisberg,
which I'm also gonna link up below here on YouTube,
that you can watch about data storytelling,
but being clear about that data and the story behind it,
is a great point to make your messaging stand out
and communicate it effectively with a dashboard.
Number three, get your data and your data sources ready.
So in this step you would actually look around
and see what data you want to use for your dashboard.
Now they might be in different sources
such as a Google Analytics, a Google AdWords,
and you might also want to take a look at your tool,
if the tool connects to all these sources,
so for example, Data Studio is quite limited
in the connectors that you have right now.
What you also want to be thinking about
is how you clean and prepare the data,
so it is useful for your dashboard later on.
So are there any data points,
any dimensions you need to pull in extra,
because you want to have interactivity
on your dashboard later, so have it filtered,
or have a date range in there,
the data actually, the data structure needs to be in place
in order to do all this.
So prepare the data and the data sources beforehand,
so you can start building your visualizations.
Which brings us to number four,
which is sketching out and visualizing.
Now before you start fiddling with the tool,
I would actually recommend to get out pen and paper,
take your audience, take your message
and your story that you want to convey and take the data,
and sketch them out on pen and paper,
how would you arrange your data on a canvas,
which visualizations would you use
to actually communicate your data effectively?
At this point in time,
you can also start looking at other visualizations
that other dashboards, how others have done it,
there are great resources for example for Data Studio,
there's the Data Studio Gallery,
there's something similar for Tableau or for Supermetrics,
or whichever tool you use to do your dashboards
and your visualizations with,
get inspired and look for the most effective way
to present your data.
Now there are many other resources
on data visualizations out there so I'm gonna link up
some resources in the description below.
And then we get to tip number five,
which is getting your tools ready
and then implementing your dashboards.
Now it's essential that you prepare a little bit
before you start building a dashboard,
how to actually use a tool,
so our tutorial on Data Studio is a great start
if you want to work with Data Studio.
There are also great resources out there for Tableau,
or, we did a tutorial on Google Sheets,
that lets you get started with
the whole data visualization part,
because you don't want to just take your plan
and start trying to implement it,
you should be able to know which visualizations go where
and how you can customize your visualizations
to tell, again, your story.
And it's all about being efficient here,
so you don't want to spend too much time
fiddling around with the tool,
but concentrating on getting your message across
with a better dashboard.
So I hope you find these tips useful.
Just to recap, number one, know your audience,
number two, get your story straight,
and then three, prepare your data and your data sources,
and then number four, sketch and visualize,
and finally, get your tools ready
and implement your dashboard. (upbeat electronic music)
And I'd love to hear from you
if you have any tips on building better dashboards,
please leave them in the comments below.
And as always, if you like this video,
please share it with a friend or a colleague,
give us a thumbs up, hit that Subscribe button,
so you will get new videos every Wednesday from us.
My name is Julian, till next time.