In order to keep a pulse on the health of your business, you need a quick and easy place to view the KPI's most important to you. The best way is to create a SaaS metrics dashboard.
What metrics to include
You're likely monitoring dozens of SaaS marketing metrics, but which ones should you add to your KPI dashboard? Obviously this will vary depending on your business model, but some simple metrics to begin with are:
- Website traffic
Visit-to-lead conversion rate
- Lead-to-customer conversion rate
Customer growth
- Software engagement
Cost-per-lead (by channel)
- Customer-acquisition-cost (
CAC)
- Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
Without an accurate way to track your marketing efforts, you're likely never going to know which channels are providing a good ROI and which are not.
How to create a dashboard
One of the challenges you'll face is combining the above metrics into one dashboard as the data comes from multiple sources. There are a few options to consider:
- Use dashboard software such as Geckoboard or Dasheroo.
- Condense to 3 or less dashboards or automated reports from the main data sources.
- Ask your development team to create one for you (you do develop software right!).
When building your SaaS metrics dashboard, be sure to follow the following tips:
- Less is more - It's easy to get carried away and add "all the metrics," but don't! The point of this KPI dashboard is to keep you focused on the metrics that matter, not get sidetracked and overwhelmed by too much data.
- View data trending - Make it easy to monitor growth trending. Include the ability to easily view week-over-week, month-over-month, quarterly and annual trending. This will help keep you and your team focused on striving to out-perform previous time periods, and scaling accordingly.
How to use
Having all of the metrics that matter in one simple dashboard makes it easier to habitually view. Make sure you always know, on a daily basis, how things are going with your most important KPI's. It's easy to get consumed in the whirlwind of the day-to-day grind, but checking your dashboard often will keep you in tune with the health of your business and focused on growth.
Updated 7/11/2020