How to Set Up an Ecommerce Dashboard in Seconds

For ecommerce companies, information is gold. You track revenue, operational cost, promotions, inventory, and much more. This wealth of information helps you spot market trends so you can plan out your online store accordingly, stop issues in their tracks so things run smoothly, and understand the customer journey so you can optimize toward more conversions.

However, many business owners quickly become buried underneath that mountain of data. There are two main reasons why:

1. It’s too much to decipher. There are many tools out there that can help you collect ecommerce analytics and track your KPIs – that’s to say, if you're not doing it all old school on paper sheets and excel spreadsheets! But even with tools to help you out, many people are unable to streamline the information enough to generate customized reports and understand the KPIs in a digestible way.
2. It’s time-consuming. Gathering the data, organizing it, analyzing it, and actually using the data to drive change takes a lot of time and effort – especially when you have multiple teams/departments that have to go through this process. Valuable time is wasted trying to keep things up to date in a way that makes sense.

If you’re feeling the pain, just know that this is when an ecommerce dashboard can really come in handy.

Why do you need a dashboard for ecommerce?

A dashboard, just like in the general sense of the word, provides you with a birds-eye view of the essential elements needed to run your ecommerce business at any given moment. It does so by tracking and analyzing key data and KPIs.

The data you use to populate your ecommerce dashboard must come from somewhere. Most small businesses start this new adventure by using built-in dashboards that automatically come in their ecommerce platforms, such as one in Shopify or Google Analytics.

While this is a great way to dip your toes into ecommerce dashboards, they’re not tailored to your specific needs, the number of stores you run, or multiple dashboards you may need to view on any given day.

Once you’re ready to really dive in, there are customizable ecommerce dashboards that pull from multiple sources such as your Shopify, HubSpot, Google Analytics, and more. The dashboard works to bring all that juicy data together in one place so you can sign in and have a clearer view of the success of your online store.

Benefits of a Centralized Dashboard for Ecommerce

They make your life easier.

Honestly, it’s arguably the best benefit – because who doesn’t want to simplify the data? Dashboards, contrary to ecommerce analytic tools and reports, shine a light on the vital information you really care about. That means you can always have the need-to-know at hand, and dive into other metrics when you have the time and urgency for it.

They can help you fix critical issues quicker.

Similar to what’s mentioned above, ecommerce dashboards display only what you need to see on a daily basis. It’s quite plausible you’d want to see operational metrics such as unanswered tickets, support issues, slow fulfillment orders, slow web speed, or low stock, for example. If you get to monitor such critical information in a streamlined way, you can fix such issues much faster.

Dashboards can boost morale.

Seeing your progress can give everyone on the team a bit of extrinsic motivation. You can utilize dashboards to spark some healthy competition and keep everyone engaged with how their respective numbers are going. Use it to track sales revenue split by market, top products, conversations for campaigns, and even followers on social networks, and more.

They save a bunch of time.

It may be the most obvious, but dashboards solve a lot of pain points for your ecommerce business as it grows. Minutes shaved off everyone’s day to log in to different workspaces and dig through numbers really adds up. Everyone across the company can access the data they need and bring it into a streamlined view with ease. Many dashboards also allow you to bookmark numbers you want to track for yourself and easily share those numbers with others.

Things to Consider Before Setting Up Your Dashboard for Ecommerce

We spoke a lot about tailoring the KPIs you see, but how do you know which type of dashboard is right for you? Here are some tips to get you started.

First, think about who uses your dashboard

It’s key you first think about who will be using your dashboard in order to unearth what type of information that person will be looking for. Everyone on your team will use the information differently.

Then, think about your goal for its use

If you’re the CEO of your own ecommerce business, you’ll most likely use an ecommerce dashboard to make strategic decisions. That means you may focus on tailoring everything toward revenue and acquisition cost, for example.

Next, add in KPIs to measure

Which KPIs need to be monitored in order to achieve the goals you decided on above? Which ones matter most to the rest of your dashboard users? These KPIs should be leading you somewhere so you get the most out of your daily dashboard use. There is a lot to choose from, but this is meant to make your life easier! A handful of chosen metrics is better than overwhelming the dashboard with numbers in this case.

Here are some important ecommerce metrics to get you started:

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This is about tracking where your customers come from and how much it costs to acquire each one. This can help you evaluate where you allocate costs toward getting new customers.
• Average Order Value: This is an important one for ecommerce businesses. It represents the average amount of money a customer spends per order. It can be used to track profitability and sales trends. Use that information to consistently elevate the average order value.
• Best Performing Products/Variants: This is as it states: your best performing products or variants. Use it to get a clear view of which products sell like hotcakes and which ones need improvement or reevaluation.
• Website Traffic: This shows how many people are on your shop daily/monthly/at the moment. Although this is a metric any type of business can benefit from, it’s especially useful for ecommerce stores to ensure shoppers are arriving and enjoying their online shopping experience. As mentioned before, it can also be used to identify any slow pages, broken links, etc. which can negatively impact sales.

Lastly, decide how you’d like the data to be presented

Don’t overlook the type of data visualization of your dashboard! You want to make sure your dashboard is something that you can easily digest and that doesn’t overwhelm you or bore you.

For example, you may want percentages to show up in pie charts and you may use bar charts to compare values. Throw in a treemap for hierarchies and a couple of tables for more detailed information – and now we’re talkin’! Many dashboards for ecommerce also allow you to change the colors to match your brand and help you compartmentalize information via hues, too.

Triple Whale: The Ecommerce Dashboard You Can Set Up in Seconds

Triple Whale brings the metrics that matter most into one easy-to-use dashboard, giving you the real-time insights you need to grow your brand.

From your preferred commerce platform to your marketing channel of choice, we integrate seamlessly with popular apps and networks, giving you one central source of truth for your store, and allowing you to view all your meaningful data from a mobile app.

With six attribution models and journey mapping, Triple Whale unlocks performance metrics that can accurately reflect & predict the health of your businesses. When you use our ecommerce dashboard, you’ll also get access to optimized ad creative reporting, so you can quickly uncover macro trends and granular insights, then generate and share real-time reports on individual creatives, ad groups, or creative types.

Simply connect your Shopify store and visualize performance across your entire marketing funnel, from ad platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, to email platforms like Klaviyo, to increased clarity with financial data, including real-time cash flow, and accrual P&L designed to help Shopify brands operate smarter.

Set Up an Actionable Ecommerce Dashboard Today

A carefully constructed dashboard can supercharge your ecommerce business by providing the insights you need in real-time. Rather than spending time sifting through data, get to the goals you want faster by utilizing the tools already out there.

From AOV to the entire customer journey, gain the centralized clarity you need by turning to Triple Whale, the purpose-built ecomOS for brands and agencies—get it today.