Introduction

Operational dashboards help track business operations. These are mostly used by supervisors or junior managers to monitor the performance of different departments.

Common operational dashboard examples include:

• Customer service dashboards
• Marketing performance dashboards
• Inventory and shipments dashboards
• Manufacturing dashboards
• Sales dashboards

Operational dashboard design examples measure performance at a lower level compared to other dashboards. The information included is typically intended for a specific department.

The best strategic dashboards give users a higher-level view of business operations. Instead of focusing on a specific department, these dashboard examples focus on KPIs that impact the entire organization.

These include:

• Target and actual revenue
• New customer acquisition
• Cost per acquisition
• Number of new leads
• Marketing qualified leads
• Sales qualified leads

These metrics help senior managers develop more effective strategies. The information included on the dashboard may not require real-time updates. These dashboard design examples may feature hourly or daily updates. They provide a birds-eye view of the performance of the organization.

While strategic dashboards offer a broad overview of an organization, analytical dashboards focus on specific areas within a department. This offers more details for specific activities, such as marketing spend.

The best dashboard UX for analytical review provides insight into specific questions that your target users need to answer. For example, a website analytical dashboard typically answers the following questions:

• How many people visited the site?
• What path led the visitors to find the site?
• How many visitors left without completing an action?
• For how long did visitors stay on the site?
• How many pages did each visitor view?