Metrics and analytics
Dashboards and the rhythm of management
How to build product dashboards and review rhythm metrics: audiences, levels of detail, alerts and data decisions.
A dashboard is useful if each metric has an owner, an expected range, and a solution when deflected. Separate health monitoring, diagnosis of causes, and strategy evaluation: Trying to put everything on one screen creates noise and trains the team to skip through the charts without action.
What is a dashboard and why use it
Definition and purpose of the dashboard
A dashboard is a visual panel that collects key metrics of a product or command. Dashboard helps you regularly monitor the state of your business, understand where the problems are, and make decisions quickly. The Dashboard always answers the question: are we moving in the right direction?
Dashboards are used to work with business metrics, product analytics, funnels, cohort analysis. The composition of the dashboard depends on the goal: it is important for top management to see financial results, CPO and product managers give priority to indicators of activity, retention, engagement.
Example: the product manager of an online store looks at the dashboard with metrics every morning - MAU, CR, average check, number of new orders, refusals, average delivery time.
What are the benefits of regularly viewing dashboards
Regular verification of key indicators helps to notice deviations in time, to start adjustments, and not to treat crises after the fact. Dashboard is a management tool, not a report for the sake of a report.
Key metrics and rhythm of control
How to Choose the Right Metrics for Dashboard
Choose metrics that really affect the product’s goals. Don’t fill the panel with unnecessary schedules.
The most basic groups of metrics: User activity (DAU, WAU, MAU) Funnel and Conversion (CR)
- Retention (containment) ARPU, ARPPU, revenue and LTV
- Operational indicators (speed, errors, bugs)
Example:
It doesn’t make sense to look at the percentage of returns per year every morning in a B2C service, but it’s important to see how much today’s Retention has fallen since the release of the new version.
Rhythm - how often and who should watch dashboards
The rhythm of management is the regularity with which the team and management look at and discuss data. In practice, the effective rhythm is as follows:
- Product and analyst look at key metrics every day
- The entire food team is on weekly syncs.
- The guide - on monthly retrospectives
The Dashboard becomes the entry point for every meeting. No idea is discussed without relying on live numbers.
Working with Experiments: From Hypothesis to Conclusions through Dashboard
How Dashboarding Helps Manage Experiments
Experiments are part of any product work. Dashboard gives quick access to all the indicators against which the hypothesis is evaluated. It is important to formalize before the experiment: what metrics we track, in what time frame we look at the change, how we interpret the result.
Example:
We’ve launched a new onboarding. On the dashboard, new users are monitored daily, and conversions from the first step to the second are watched. After a week, it was clear that it was better or the idea didn’t work.
How to formulate conclusions and implement changes
Through regular viewing of dashboards, fix not only deviations, but also their causes. If the growth was accompanied by other changes (e.g. improved server response time), it is important to separate the signals from the noise. Document hypotheses, record the date and range of the change in the indicator, check whether the effect is repeated.
Mistakes and anti-patterns in working with dashboards
Overloading the dashboard with unnecessary data
A common mistake is to add everything to the panel that can be measured. It’s smearing the trick. Leave only what really affects the product decisions.
Example:
In the marketing dashboard, leave only CAC, CR, ROAS, and not dozens of intermediate clicks and displays.
Ignoring rhythm and formal reporting
Another problem is that the dashboard is only watched before the demo or at the end of the month for reporting to the bosses. Decisions based on outdated data often lead to costly errors. Fix this: let the discussion of numbers become a habit.
Introduction and development of dashboards: what to consider at the start
What tools to choose
The choice of platform depends on the tasks and the amount of data. For fast MVPs, Google Data Studio, for complex product companies, Tableau, PowerBI, or Looker (https://chartio.com/learn/business-intelligence/best-dashboard-software/). Selection criteria: ease of connection, auto-update, filtering, configuration of access levels, download speed.
How to evaluate and improve the dashboard
Read regularly if you need metrics – if you don’t use metrics in the decision discussion, remove them from the panel. Validate the numbers, engage the team in the discussion and improve the format (colors, visualization, alerts).
FAQ on dashboards and rhythm control
**Why do you need to watch a dashboard every day when there are few big changes? To quickly notice small anomalies, monitor trends and not miss out on failures.
What is the best way to talk about metrics for a product team? In practice: daily individual viewing, together - once a week, the results of the month - for strategic decisions.
**What metrics should always be on the dashboard? Mandatory metrics of product health: user activity, revenue or revenue, conversion of key action, errors (bug rate).
*What are the best tools to start with? Google Data Studio, Yandex DataLens, Tableau, as described in comparison of BI systems on Chartio.
*How do you know if the dashboard is effective? If decisions and discussions are regularly based on data from the dashboard, the metrics reflect current goals and are not overloaded with unnecessary information.
How to protect yourself from data corruption? Audit the collection of metrics, identify the owners of indicators, regularly validate the sources and logic of measurement.