Performance Dashboard Tutorial

Introduction

This documents describes how to set-up the Excel templates provided by L3 Analytics. The configuration is straight forward: fill in all fields from the spreadsheet “Setup Dashboard” to personalise the template and we thenpress one button to create the dashboard.

Several options are available to customise dashboards for everyone’s needs. Some help can be found for each field within Excel Comments but it is recommended to also read this detailed guide to make sure you use all required features to answer your business questions.

Please note that while those templates can be highly personalised, you may need additional customisations for your organisation.If you need further assistance to create your own dashboards, L3 Analytics will be happy to help you:

1Design

1.1Company Name

The first step is to fill in your company name. For example, for us it would be “L3 Analytics”:

Your company name will appear within the dashboard title:

1.2Dashboard Version

Three versions are available for this Performance dashboard:

Dashboard V1 presents two charts and a single vertical axis to change metrics using drop down boxes:

Dashboard V2 displays a text zone to add comments instead of the second chart:

Dashboard V3also has a text zone but users can display metrics on two vertical axis:

1.3Colour Scheme

Then, we can choose a colour for our dashboard:

We just need to select the cell and use the shading tool to select our colour:

This scheme colour will be used for the dashboard headers:

1.4Text Colour

We can either choose black or white for our text colour. You may choose “White” to better see title names with a dark colour scheme:

2Personalisation

2.1Select Period

Then, we need to define a period. This depends on the intended usage of your dashboard. For example, to analyse performance every week I would choose a weekly dashboard:

The period matters because it will be used to compare performance between two date ranges on a regular basis:

Please note that this period will alsobe used as the default interval on the charts for the horizontal axes.

2.2Select Comparison

You may choose a standard comparisonto compare data with the last period (i.e. this month against last month)or a custom period to comparewith the year before (i.e. this month against the same month last year):

Please note that if you select a custom weekly period, you will actually compare the two last weeks against each other. Comparing the current week with the same one the year before cannot be achieved with this free template but L3 Analytics would be happy to help you if you need any help on this point.

2.3Currency Symbol

The currency symbol needs to be entered to display any revenue metrics within the dashboard:

2.4Size of Change

Our template highlights the percentage of change when the changeagainst the comparison period is greater than either 5, 10 or 20 percent:

For example, on the below screenshot, the first and second % change are highlighted whereas the third one is not:

3Metrics

3.1Name your Metric Groups

The next step is to name the metric groups. Names are automatically duplicated on the right table:

This will be used as the title for each metric table:

3.2Name your Metric

For each metric group you can choose up to three metrics:

For example:

3.3Define Format

For every metric we then select the right format (i.e. “%” for the bounce rate or “Currency” for the turnover):

Example:

3.4Define Desired Action

A raise in a metric can have a positive impact (i.e. conversion rate) or a negative one (i.e. bounce rate). Selecting either “Positive” or “Negative” will highlight important changes in green if the impact is positive and in red if this is negative:

Example:

4Name your Segments

Note: this feature is only included in some dashboard templates

Instead of creating several dashboards you may add segments to display the exact same metrics but for a subset of your data (i.e. only people coming from abroad):

Note that if you need more segments, simply enter more segment names directly below the Segments table

On the dashboard, selecting a segment fromthe drop down box will update all data:

5Complete

Once all fields are correct, click on the button “Set-up Dashboard” (macros must be enabled):

The result can be viewed on the worksheet “Dashboard”:

Unused dashboard versions, setup and instructions worksheets can be deleted:

Only the worksheets Dashboard and Data Summary should remain visible:

6Update

Once the dashboard has been setup, we need to update it at the end of each period by filling in the Data Summary worksheet and clicking on the button “update”.

6.1Date

We need to select here the date of the ending period. If we needed to insert data for a weekly dashboard, from the 7th of October to the 14th, I would write “14/10”:

For a monthly dashboard I would have filled in “31/10” and for a daily one, I would have selected the date of the day.

Please note that the date should automatically be updated with the format dd-mmm. You may have filled in a wrong value if you see a different format.

6.2Metrics

The data for each metric group and segments needs to be inserted in the following table for the desired period. There are two ways to add those values:

Manually: we can copy/paste figures from any data sources
Automatically: we can use tools such as APIs to automatically push values into the cells

6.3Update button

Clicking on the button “update dashboard” will copy all data into hidden worksheets (one per segment) and will automatically update the dashboard: