Custom Reporting Dashboards

Wait, what exactly is a “dashboard?”

It’s true: “Dashboard” is sort of a buzzword and its meaning is ambiguous. When we say “custom reporting dashboard,” what we mean is an online report you can access from anywhere that shows you only the information you actually want and need, not thousands of rows of data.

 

Depending on the data, metrics, and reporting platforms involved, a dashboard can be created with a variety of tools.

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• Excel/Google Sheets – Spreadsheets can easily become overwhelming, but they also include a variety of powerful built-in functions that can quickly aggregate and transform multiple tabs and endless rows of data into neat tables and graphs.

• Google Data Studio – This is Highway One’s preferred platform for dashboard and report creation. Like it’s most notable competitors, Tableau and Microsoft PowerBI, GDS allows for advanced analytics by allowing for easy merging of data sets (e.g. combining your PPC channel sales data with your cost of goods on a product level) and interactive filters so you (the report viewer) can further slice and segment the data as needed. 

• “Connector” Apps – Working with the data sets is one thing, but what about keeping them up to date? Apps like Zapier and Supermetrics allow for connections between different platforms via an API connection, so reports can be pulled in automatically on a schedule or as new data becomes available. For example, if you have ad spend across multiple marketing channels, a Supermetrics report can import data from each platform individually into a single spreadsheet or workbook. From there, a dashboard is much easier to create.

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Why Can’t I Just Make My Own Dashboard?

 

Fair question. And you can! All you need is:

• Raw data files or API access to data sources

• A reporting platform you’re comfortable using

• Understanding of data formatting and visualization

• Understanding of potential data duplication issues across different platforms (Google Analytics and Facebook Ads, for example).

• The time to pull this all together and keep it up to date.

 

If you can check off each of those items, you are fully capable of creating your own dashboards. You can even do a Google search for some templates and examples to work off of.

 

On the other hand, if you’re not feeling confident in being able to pull this all together, that’s what this service offering is all about. Highway One Marketing makes sure your reports use all available information to help you easily understand past performance, current trends, and future projections. It’s “business intelligence” that may small businesses don’t even realize is available to them.