Are you trying to build an accurate small business dashboard to track your marketing and sales efforts?
Analytics dashboards are a great way for you, your team, and your clients to stay "in the know."
But, unfortunately, many companies rely on the wrong KPIs and end up in 1 of 2 scenarios:
- People get overwhelmed by the amount of data and don't take efficient action
- People forget to check in with their dashboard and don't take any action
That's why, in today's post, we're going to teach you the 7 KPIs small business dashboards should include at a minimum.
Then we'll share an alternative to marketing dashboards so you can ensure people are actually using the data you gather.
Ready to get started? Let's dive straight into the list.
7 Small Business Dashboard KPIs
The first 4 KPIs you need to track are pretty much the same for every small business.
But the last 3 will be a bit more dynamic.
That's because they cover the most important metric for a particular marketing channel:
- Social Media
- Email
- Pay-per-Click Ads
Again, this is NOT a comprehensive or exhaustive list of small business dashboard KPIs.
Instead, it's a baseline that you can use to create a unique dashboard for your team or clients.
1) Traffic by Source
This is the most basic KPI you should track early on.
You want to make sure your traffic sources are diversified and that there aren't any big outliers (like a single source bringing in 80% of your site visits).
Also, if one particular channel starts causing issues, it's important for you to know quickly so you can make changes.
What you want to track:
The number of visits per month from each source (i.e., Organic, Paid, Social, etc.).
If you find that you DO have a single source bringing in most of your traffic, that's OK.
But you'll want to use this data to explore other options to protect you from putting all your eggs into one basket.
2) Conversion Rate by Source
The next set of KPIs you want to track is your conversion rates by source.
This will let you know if your traffic sources are converting well or need some work.
If one particular channel is bringing in lots of sales but not much traffic (or vice versa), it's important for you to know that quickly.
That way you can focus your efforts on the right traffic sources to ensure YOU are getting a return on investment (ROI).
Now, not every channel is MEANT to convert.
Some social media strategies are focused on building brand awareness and improving the company's online presence.
While they can't accurately track sales to their presence on social media, these businesses might see that overall revenue goes up as a result.
So keep your conversion rates by source at hand, but also keep the bigger picture in mind.
This leads us nicely to our next KPI...
3) Revenue
This metric should be on every small business dashboard.
It's a summary of all the revenue your company brings in from every source.
If you can tie it directly to a marketing channel, that's even better.
But it's important to see trends in revenue because, let's be honest, accurately tracking every sale from each source is difficult.
Most agencies and teams have GOOD systems in place, but they aren't perfect.
Let's say, for example, you start using Live Chat widgets to boost sales on your site. Those sales used to be attributed to your blog posts, but they're now being funneled through Live Chat.
This doesn't make the blog post less effective, you're just attributing less sales to that channel.
Maybe they're still bringing in the right kind of traffic to give Live Chat warmer leads.
At any rate, revenue is a concrete metric that can show your efforts are at least trending in the right direction over time.
4) Return on Investment (ROI) by Source
In the last tip, we looked at overall revenue to hedge your bets against inaccurate attribution tracking.
But there is a lot to be said about getting more granular.
If you can track ROI by source, this is the perfect time to do it.
Let's go back once more to our Live Chat example:
The sales that were attributed to your blog posts now show up as a new channel. And the leads from those chats are being converted at a higher rate than any other traffic source.
This would suggest that Live Chat is an incredibly valuable channel for you to invest more time and money into.
ROI by source can help make those kinds of decisions easier for you.
On a monthly basis, you can look at which source gave you the highest ROI and decided where to double down on your efforts.
When a channel is consistently improving over time, you can start addressing other areas where your ROI is lower than you'd like it to be.
5) Social Media Engagement Growth
If you're on social media (i.e., likes/comments/shares), small business dashboards should look at trends in that data too.
But rather than looking at your follower growth, I think engagement is a better place to start.
You can get a lot of value out of looking at how likes, shares, and clicks your social posts are producing.
For example, maybe you want to know what kind of content resonates best with your audience? This is exactly the kind of thing tracking your organic posts click-through rates would tell you.
Or maybe Facebook is bringing in lots of traffic but not many conversions. If a post brings in lots of likes and shares, it might be worth refining your CTA to get more.
So keep an eye on which metrics are trending up or down over time to see how your social media strategies have been going.
6) Email Marketing Engagement Growth
This is a big one.
Email marketing can be an incredibly powerful channel for small businesses, but it requires a bit of time and effort to get working well.
If your business hasn't been investing in email campaigns yet, you'll want to check out our email growth metrics post. It goes over everything from subscriber rates, open/click-through rates, and list growth.
Again, you aren't necessarily concerned with the number of followers on your list here.
10,000 generic and disinterested leads are way worse than 100 highly qualified and engaged leads.
What you want to look at is how your audience is responding to your emails. That means adding KPIs to your small business dashboards like open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
7) Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) by Channel
Last but not least, let's talk about one of the most important pieces of an effective small business dashboard.
ROAS by channel is a way to measure how effectively you spend your budget on paid traffic sources like Facebook ads or AdWords campaigns.
This will be different for every company and industry, so there isn't any hard-and-fast rule here.
But there are some basic metrics to keep an eye on, like cost per acquisition (CPA) and ROAS by channel. That will give you a good baseline for where your efforts should be focused first if the other numbers don't look too promising.
And remember that this is just one small part of your small business dashboard.
Your goals here are to look for ways where your ROI is lower than you'd like it to be, and then address those areas first. You might find that by focusing on one or two channels instead of everything at once, so you can see even better results.
An Alternative to Business Dashboards
One thing I always like to bring up is that while analytics dashboards can be helpful, they have a BIG problem:
They require your team or clients to go check in on them.
This usually leads to marketers or decision-makers knowing they have the data whenever they need but not actually checking in with it to make crucial decisions.
Instead, they'll look at some basic metrics in Google Analytics and just do their best to survive another week.
That's why I always recommend using marketing reports instead. And for that, you can use a tool like Metrics Watch to get started:
Metrics watch is by far one of the best report tools for small businesses.
It comes with all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a reporting tool, but has a major advantage:
Your reports are sent directly to your recipients' inbox.
Not as a PDF attachment and not as a 3rd-party dashboard link.
Instead, you can send data with visual graphs directly via email with no added friction. That means you're getting the right data to the right people at just the right times.
And you're relying on a platform (email) that they already use and love.
But why not try it for yourself and see? Click below to start your 100% risk-free Metrics Watch trial today:
Start Your Free Trial Today!And that's all for now. These have been 7 small business dashboard KPIs that you need to start tracking.
If you enjoyed this post, then you'll definitely want to look at the following articles:
These resources will have even more information on how you can build better, more profitable marketing reports.