✅ 1. Understand Your Metrics

Start by identifying:

• What type of data you’re working with (e.g., revenue, conversion rate, user counts).
• Whether the metrics are related or stand-alone.
• If they need to be tracked over time, compared, or evaluated against a goal.

✅ 2. Define the Purpose of Each Metric

Ask for each KPI:

• Am I showing how this changes over time?
• Do I want to compare values across categories?
• Should I display progress toward a goal or target?
• Am I breaking down parts of a whole?

✅ 3. Choose a Chart Type Based on the Purpose

• To show trends over time
  Use line charts, area charts, or sparklines.
  Ideal for metrics like monthly sales, daily traffic, or customer growth.
• To compare different categories
  Use bar charts (horizontal) or column charts (vertical).
  Great for comparing performance across products, channels, or teams.
• To track progress toward a goal
  Use gauge charts, progress bars, or bullet charts.
  Useful for visualizing things like target revenue, quota completion, or uptime.
• To show proportions or composition
  Use donut charts, stacked bar charts, or 100% stacked area charts.
  Best for illustrating how individual parts contribute to a total (like traffic sources or budget spend).
• To show relationships or correlations
  Use scatter plots or bubble charts.
  Good for examining the relationship between metrics, like marketing spend vs. lead quality.
• To summarize key performance
  Use KPI cards with trend indicators or color coding.
  Ideal for showing single values like current revenue, NPS, or bounce rate at a glance.

✅ 4. Best Practices

• Keep it simple: One key message per chart. Avoid visual clutter.
• Use consistent colors: For the same metric across different charts.
• Make it interactive: Add filters or toggles if you have many metrics.
• Include context: Add comparison to targets, previous period, or goals.
• Avoid pie charts for more than 4 slices: They become hard to read.

✅ 5. Final Tips

• Use line charts for anything time-based.
• Use bar charts for category comparison.
• Use cards or gauges for headline KPIs.
• Avoid overloading a single chart with too many data series.
• Review with end users to ensure the dashboard answers their actual questions.