Why You Need a Sales Dashboard to Make Decisions for Your Biz
How quickly can you answer questions about your business?
If someone asked you how much money you made last month, you might be able to answer fairly quickly. Revenue data usually isn’t too hard to find, and it’s a metric you likely keep an eye on constantly.
But what if I asked you which product or service brought in most of that revenue? Or whether this new amount was higher or lower than last month? The more specific you get with your questions, the tougher it can be to find the answers in your data.
That’s why it’s so helpful to have a sales dashboard that can pull all your information into one easily accessible location. Let’s walk through what a typical sales dashboard looks like and what you can do with it!
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A bird’s-eye view of a sales dashboard
A typical sales dashboard that I’d custom-build for my clients looks like this:
One of my favourite features of sales dashboards? The ability to see your numbers in different cross sections of time. Look at the top right corner, and you’ll notice that you can choose whichever date range you’d like.
(Don’t worry, everything you see here is based on sample data that I’ve prepared. Client data is always kept confidential!)
The sales dashboard I’d build for your business may look a little different depending on what you sell and what you do. But overall, this will help you imagine what you’re able to see — and why it’s so helpful having these numbers at your fingertips!
Key numbers are easy to find at the top of your dashboard
Let’s check out the numbers at the top of your dashboard for easy access. We have total sales, total refunds, and net sales. Isn’t it amazing how easily you can grab that information from one spot, rather than bouncing from tool to platform to program? It cuts down on time and confusion!
Next, we have the total number of transactions, total number of refunds, and average order value, or AOV. If you want to increase your revenue, aim to bump up your AOV. Customers who are already buying from you may be open to purchasing more with upsells or one-time offers.
Finally, we have your customer’s lifetime value. This is a number you want to track so you can watch it increase over time. The easiest person to sell to is an existing customer, not a new customer, so strive to serve your current customers as best you can.
Understand which products or services are performing best
You’ll notice the rest of the sales dashboard is filled with charts to help you evaluate your numbers. The first chart shows which products are driving net revenue.
In this example, we have four different products, three of which are one-time purchases, and one that has a payment plan (which is why you see initial payments and rebills). You can see the number of units sold, net sales driven by each product, and the percentage of total net revenue that each product is responsible for.
This data is essential for making decisions about which products to market or improve. It’s tempting to let your emotions drive your decisions about products or services — which is understandable, as it’s your business! But numbers can help you view things more objectively.
View how your net revenue changes over time
The next few charts on our sample sales dashboard show us how net revenue changes over time. In my experience, this number can be very tough to find without digging into profit/loss statements or your bookkeeping software. (And who wants to do that if it can be avoided?)
The first chart shows monthly totals, but the second chart shows how things change year over year. With this information, you can answer questions like:
- Are you actually seeing growth month over month?
- How do sales change throughout the year?
- Do you have slow months or seasons in your business?
- Do you have busy months or seasons in your business?
- What should you focus on marketing-wise in the months to come?
Here’s an example of how a client of mine used this data to help plan their marketing calendar for the next six months.
They initially thought about skipping an upcoming month, but the data in their year-over-year comparison showed that that particular month was actually one of their top revenue generators! Without this data, they could have overlooked one of their busiest and most profitable times of the year.
Learn about payment processors and purchase platforms
Finally, we have charts on this sales dashboard that illustrate the splits between the payment processor and purchase platform that are used the most often.
Many online businesses use multiple payment processors and various platforms. By pulling everything together into a single dashboard, you have one source you can rely on for all of that data!
If you sell on multiple platforms, I’m sure you already know how challenging it is to pull all of your separate numbers and combine them in a way that makes sense. A sales dashboard does it for you automatically. And it populates your numbers each day, week, or month.
You may not need this data as often as the other numbers we’ve discussed, but it’s helpful if you’re trying to decide whether to remove a payment processor or quit a specific platform. Your dashboard will tell you what’s being used, how often, and whether those numbers are changing.
Get an accurate picture of your biz with a sales dashboard
A sales dashboard is one of the most powerful tools that my clients enjoy! It usually isn’t the main thing clients ask for, but it almost always ends up being the tool that gets used the most often.
Yes, you can pull some of this information from your accounting program, your monthly profit/loss statement, or other software and tools. But that takes time that could be spent on other parts of your business. And you have to manually pull your data every single time.
A sales dashboard automates it all for you in real-time. Not only can you understand what’s happening in your business at the moment, but you can make decisions quickly if need be.
Want to learn more about the sales dashboard I can custom-build for your business? Let’s talk!
