One of the recent water cooler conversations around the Mozplex has been about dashboards. The question: What makes a great dashboard? We all use these top-level reports in various apps everyday, for professional and personal reasons, and some are better than others.
At their best, these reports can do an amazing job of making our work more efficient. You check the dashboard, review your progress, gather some insights, and know what to do next. Etta James cues up, the clouds part, sunshine beams down on your desk, and a unicorn gallops in slow motion past your office window.
But at their worst, dashboards are lacking in useful info, cluttered, or convoluted. They amount to one more click between you and the real details you need in an app, adding to the clown-car cycle of chasing down your next actions.
So we put the question to you...
What dashboards give you your “At Last” moment? Or are at least useful? What features on those dashboards are the most useful?
Take moment and fill out this survey and share your thoughts.
To get you thinking about this, here are some some favorites from Mozzers, in no particular order:
WebTrends
Rand says: Beautiful UI/UX, fun to look at, colorful, bleeding edge.
Miranda says: Clean design, interesting use of typography, and nice supporting visuals.
Mint
Courtney says: It’s super detailed and yet, I know what to do what to do at first glance. The yellow, green, red indicators show my progress and warn me when I’m approaching or over budget. Alerts at the top of the page provide insights into how I’m doing and what I can do better. Goals provide easy benchmarking. This holistic view paints the entire picture in a way that is easy to digest and suggests actions, and I love that I can dig deeper into any of these topics with a single click (or two).
New Relic
Thomas says: I get quick access to recent over-time data for the most important metric in a way that can be dissected easily. A statistical score for most important metrics, plus traffic. You can change the timeframe quickly. They provide alerts, have nice use of color, and use consistent help-hovers.
GeckoBoard
Adam says: It’s perhaps not the most beautiful dashboard, but it’s broadly customizable. There’s something to be said for a big bold dashboard that shows off your key daily metrics in big bold type.
Joanna says: For me a dashboard needs to both summarize the movement of my data but also suggest a next step. I think Adwords does a solid job, but I also find that paid marketing platforms in general do a great job of surfacing the changes I should prioritize investigating. For me its all about summarizing and prioritizing...and it being pretty of course. Give me all that and I'm not going anywhere.
WordPress
Rand says: It gets me all the info I need, and it’s customizable.
KISSInsights
Joanna says: KISSInsights has test summaries and important info, all laid out very digestibly.
More favorites include:
Mixpanel
SimplyMeasured
Chartbeat
Please share your favorites with us!
Wow, I like some of those Dashboards up there. I will have to go back in and take a look at the programs again.
Another dashboard I visually like is for Sprout Social https://sproutsocial.com
I have to agree, Sprout Social have an awesome looking dashboard.
Of the dashboards from the blog I'll go with Mint's.
I am using the Google analytics custom dashboards, I like them but a little more flexibility would be ideal.
Interesting question indeed! In my personal opinion dashboard that tells you more about your progress in the first few seconds… even better if you can get this info without clicking on any button.
Most people are use-to of wordpress dashboard interface and to be honest its quite friendly but in all the one given above… I think Mint.com have this thing…
Mint.com contains lot of information in the first go, yet I am able to find what I want without getting confused with the amount of information displayed!
You should check out the Optimizely dashboard. It's pretty slick.
https://www.optimizely.com/
Customization trumps all when it comes to dashboards, in my opinion. If I want detailed info, I know how to find it... but the entire point of a dashboard is to be an overview/summary. Being able to tell it exactly what is important to me, and how that information appears is key. A dashboard I can't customize is a dashboard I'm not likely to use very much.
Disclaimer - I am an inverstor and advisor to Spring Metrics, but am in no way biased :)
But seriously, their Conversion Analytics dashboarrd is awesome for monitoring what matters.
https://www.springmetrics.com/features.php
...Tim Huntley
My favorite is Wordpress, it is always up to date. Wordpress is also very compatibale. I have used Four square and godaddys website tonight (they are horribale after using Wordpress) This was prior to SEO. Wordpress is fully customizable and has a Ish ton of plug ins.
I was going to suggest two. You've already got one of them though - SimplyMeasured. Theirs is great and just keeps getting better to be honest. The other that I really like is Sprinklr's. A different tool but the UI is great and for something that tends to be a bit complicated I think it does a great job of laying things out in the most intuitive manner.I tend to very strongly agree with @Collin Jarman when he said he values customizability. Every business is different - so I'm all for an incredible dashboard and UI as default, but I LOVE having the ability to tweak it based on my individual needs beyond that.
Es. Mis dashboards favoritos están realizados con Spreadsheet y Analytics https://analisis-web.blogspot.com.es/p/dashboard-analytics-los-cuadros-de.html
En. My favorite dashboards are made by Spreadsheet and Analytics https://analisis-web.blogspot.com.es/p/dashboard-analytics-los-cuadros-de.html
Haven't seen this one before, and we'll definitely check it out. Thanks for sending!
My favorite is Wordpress hehe
https://www.imspot.org/forum.php
Wordpress of course and I did like Google Analytics old version dashboard. Probably because I was so used to it and Have not had the time to spend with the new version. Partially because so many systems are now integrating that data into their own (seomoz & raven tools come to mind).
Agree with Rand on WebTrends. 100% Love this Dashboard. Also the megaphone on SimplyMeasure is cool.
Absolutely love the suggestions! This is one of my favorite topics.
I am biased and I like https://www.agencyplatform.com (I am associated with this platform).
My other favorite dashboards are Vitrue.com and Ubervu.com .
The dashboard at https://www.bizbrag.com is clean, functional and offers unique editing capabilities.
Thanks, this is a new one to the list! Will definitely check it out.
I personally like https://foxmetrics.com dashboards but I may be bias. :)
Disclaimer: I'm the founder and I'm proud to say that FoxMetrics has a great looking set of reports.
Adobe's SiteCatalyst has an easy to use dashboard builder that lets you create any type of reporting you want to see - I'd give them a look too.
I'd have to say my adsense Dashboard, its showing me how much money i'm going to make for that day through adsense.
But coming from more of an IT background I really like how simple and customizable Geckoboard's dashboard is, it gives you all the information you want at an easy to glance style. I'm trying to get a large LCD on the wall set up in the office, so we can just glance over at it and see how our clients are going.
Nice. I highly recommend the LCD for GeckoBoard. We've got one at the MozPlex, and it's fantastic!
First of all-grat idea for this dashboard's comparison! It's so important for users to get a clear and intuitive dashboard, especially in case of analytic tools
I use the Colibri Tool and really like it's dashboard-a great view for all analytics and the newest complex view of all competitor's by keywords-all very clear and intuitive-just chceck out some sreenshots in Colibri's FB gallery:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=352015424845933&set=a.352015248179284.81247.241662119214598&type=3&theater
I'm currently testing Webmastat https://www.webmastat.com/ - I need a couple of days to form my opinion, but it seems quite useful.
It displays a large configurable table with SEO data for multiple websites - imported from multiple sources.
Interesting new one, and thanks for suggesting it!
I use my own one to Masure SEO Performance you can download it right there
These are some terrific suggestions and examples, everyone! Keep them coming, either right here in comments or in our quick survey. Cheers!
You should really take a look at Leftronic, it hooks into tons of data sources and is very easy to use.
https://www.leftronic.com/
When we're talking Social Analytics - I'm missing HootSuite: https://hootsuite.com/features/social-analytics
I love their modular approach, enabling you to easily pull together and share custom reports.
Reports can also easily be rebranded, which can be a great plus for agencies.
And did I mention it's extremely affordable too? ;-)
That AOI web site in the WebTrends example sure does look familiar somehow... :)
I personally like Google Webmasters dashboard, although I wish all the information above the fold.
We used Webtrends for awhile, then we realized it is not about the presentation but the data itself that are important, we rolled back to Google Analytics.
Interesting, Etienne, and thanks for that feedback!
I like Wordpress Dashboard and also Google Webmaster Dashboard, I was seen all above bt i like most these both dashboard.
all above are also too good and better than Google and Wordpress too. Always Thumbs up!!!! :)
Couint me in with the Wordpress group. I really like the way plugins are incorporated so seamlessly. If getting the user up to speed quickly is important then, WP is the bomb.
I would prefer the wordpress if the choice is too narrow and limited. But in general I would like to have a custmizable dashboard where i can change the menus from time to time, bring forth some menus and then take them off after a while.