The request
From Catherine Hale, Chief Executive Officer
“In two weeks I decide whether to raise the 2026 marketing budget again. I want one dashboard page I can open before the meeting, not a data dump. What would you put on it?”
Your goal
Pick the dashboard design that fits Catherine's decision.
Revenue from completed orders divided by marketing spend in the same year: $4.19 in 2023, $4.51 in 2024, $4.50 in 2025.
Show the numbers
| Revenue per $1 of marketing | |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 4.19 |
| 2024 | 4.51 |
| 2025 | 4.5 |
What Catherine gets, and why
The lesson
Start from the decision, not the data
A dashboard is not a place to show everything the database holds. It exists to support a decision (raise the budget?), to monitor something that needs action (orders stuck in pending), or to let an analyst explore. Name the purpose first, then the audience. A CEO wants direction and impact; a sales lead wants targets against actuals; marketing wants cost per conversion by channel; finance wants margin and cash. The same data gives four different pages.
Pick the KPIs that bear on it
For Catherine’s budget question, Harbor & Pine’s 2025 numbers:
| KPI | 2024 | 2025 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue (completed orders) | $1.99M | $2.30M | +15.4% |
| Completed orders | 3,673 | 4,295 | +16.9% |
| Marketing spend | $442k | $511k | +15.6% |
| Revenue per marketing dollar | $4.51 | $4.50 | flat |
| Orders not completed | 9.2% | 10.2% | +1.0 pt |
Revenue per marketing dollar is the one that speaks to the decision: it was $4.19 in 2023, rose to $4.51, and then held. Four to six KPIs like these, each next to last year’s value, beat twenty tiles without context.
Tell it as a story
A useful structure is context → problem → insight → action. Context: revenue grew 15%. Problem: spend grew just as fast. Insight: each marketing dollar still brings about $4.50, so growth came from spending more, not from spending better. Action: raise the budget only with a test that shows where an extra dollar earns more than $4.50.
The title carries the insight. “Revenue” is a label; “Revenue grew 15%, but each marketing dollar still brought $4.50” is a conclusion the reader can agree or argue with.
Lay out the page
- Top: the KPIs, each with the comparison (vs last year, vs target).
- Middle: trends that explain them, such as monthly revenue and spend against 2024.
- Bottom: detail for the follow-up question, such as revenue per dollar by channel.
Common mistakes
- Everything on one page. If every number is there, none of them stands out.
- Titles that name the metric. Say what the chart shows, not what it measures.
- A colour per chart. Use one accent for the thing that matters and grey for context.
- Charts without a conclusion. If you can’t say what a chart tells the reader, remove it.
Lantern lit!
Practised: dashboard designkpisdata storytellingaudience
- Solved
- No hints
- First run