Today, it’s hard to imagine an app without a dashboard. They have become ubiquitous. They have even been incorporated into our phone settings in the form of displays of device health and battery usage.
But if it used to be “let’s put a data console in here to make management happy”, developing a web panel today is very different and challenging. In this blog, we’ve gathered everything you need to know to develop a beautiful and effective dashboard web app.
Tables
1. Differences between dashboard and report
- What is a web dashboard?
- What is a report?
- Images vs. text
- Conciseness vs. longevity
- CEO vs. employees
- Dynamic vs. static
2. Reasons You Need a Dashboard Web App
- Empower Employees
- Inform Management
3. Turnkey Solutions vs. Custom Development
- Pros and Cons of Turnkey Solutions
- Pros and Cons of Custom Applications
4. Top 3 SaaS and Turnkey Solutions
- Google Data Studio
- Sisense
- Qlik Sense
5. How to create a website with custom control panel?
- Step 1: Find a product that is right for the market
- Step 2: Design
- Step 3: review available tools
- Step 4: quality control
- Step 5: implement and maintain
6. How much does it cost to create your own web panel?
7. Our Dashboard Web Application Development Experience
8. Time to Create a Web Dashboard
Dashboard vs. Report Differences
You may often hear the terms used interchangeably in organizations, for example For example, when someone asks where they can find the information they’re looking for, and a colleague refers them to a dashboard or report.
And I’m sure you already feel the difference between these two, but let’s draw the line and help you out. to understand the peculiarities of dashboards and reports. That way you’ll know if you want to create a dashboard or web-based reports.
What is a Web Dashboard?
In the software field, a dashboard is a visual, at-a-glance representation of key data points. That’s all. If your company sells medical equipment and your web app shows you a chart of the top 10 items sold over the last month, that’s a dashboard right there.
The key metric of whether what has been successful is what fraction of your employees use that dashboard every day.
Keith Rabois
What is a report? ?
What if your web application from the example above listed all medical items sold in the last month ordered by volume? Well, that would be a report, wouldn’t it? Thus, a report is a detailed (often textual) representation of a massive set of data.
Images vs. Text
If given Mind you, we have already differentiated dashboards and reports in their definitions using this same criteria. A data console transmits data through graphics: tables, graphs, diagrams, etc. And the reports are often presented in the form of tables where the information is communicated verbatim.
Conciseness vs. longevity
Reports are lengthy and the dashboards are concise. Dashboard gurus, for example Stephen Few, emphasize that an effective dashboard fits within a single screen:
“My insistence that a dashboard should limit its display to a single screen without The need to scroll or switch between multiple screens may seem arbitrary and a bit finicky, but it’s based on solid, practical logic.”
Stephen Few, Information Dashboard Design
That seems to be on the surface indeed: reports need to provide the underlying data in full to allow users to analyze trends, and dashboards focus on a few KPIs that are critical to a certain aspect of a company’s operations company.
Related: App Metrics to Track
CEO vs. Employees
The Target Audience for Dashboards display and reporting will also differ slightly. While both are often designed for C-suite convenience, the dashboards are predominantly used by high-ranking managers like CEOs. Reporting is used by virtually everyone—from middle managers to company VPs.
In other words, dashboards help business leaders make insightful decisions, and reports provide the data for insights .
Dynamic vs. Static
Some argue that a dashboard often displays dynamic content that can change in real time and that reports only include static data.
That’s not entirely true, as modern web applications allow you to have both static and dynamic reports. However, the purpose of reports is to provide a snapshot of data over a period, and data dashboards focus on real-time data.
Reasons why you need an app dashboard web
I still remember a discussion with one of our clients explaining their reasoning for including a data visualization in a web application: “Because everyone loves dashboards, right?” ?” And you know, it’s hard to argue.
“There’s magic in charts. The profile of a curve reveals an entire situation in an instant: the life story of an epidemic, a panic or an era of prosperity. The curve informs the mind, awakens the imagination, convinces.”
Henry D. Hubbard, modernized Mendeleev’s periodic table
The boards are a often attractive to the eye and sometimes provide the only outlet for the wearer’s eyes. However, let’s take a look at the business goals you can pursue when planning to build a dashboard website.
Empower Employees
First , a perfectly designed and implemented data visualization dashboard can make your team members more productive. They can start their day by assessing the areas that need their most attention and dig into the details. With a web data console, your employees:
- work with the same critical data points on different computers
- easily access essential information
- on board and interact with company operations faster
Inform management
Designing a web dashboard helps management of the company to make vital decisions faster and control what happens. happening in the company in general. Are there specific KPIs that need further attention? Are we still on target to reach the annual goals? CEOs, VPs and other decision makers find comfort in having at-a-glance access to critical business data:
- access at-a-glance assessment business health
- quickly assess risk and progress
- share a snapshot of business data securely
Also related: the complete guide to building hospital management software
Out-of-the-box solutions vs. custom development
If you want to build a dashboard web app, it’s worth It’s worth knowing the alternatives. In the case of a dashboard for your website, you can choose from ready-to-use solutions. Of course, these out-of-the-box products will have some advantages and disadvantages over a custom web dashboard. Let’s see which variant works best for your company.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Out-of-the-Box Solutions
A ready-to-use dashboard on the website can save the time and money you would have to spend to develop a dashboard app from scratch. What usually happens with out-of-the-box solutions is that companies choose an enterprise package that suits their business needs and implement it.
For example, a real estate company might look at analytics software that comes with dashboards. Once they find a suitable solution, all they need to do is populate it with real data.
Another approach is to use a builder that allows the enterprise to create its own web data dashboard using existing templates. What these out-of-the-box products miss is the flexibility to connect to any database or API to receive the data for visualization.
Pros:
- relatively easy and inexpensive to implement
- provide dashboard templates
- various charting options
- support for mobile resolutions
- built-in security
Cons:
- one-size-fits-all approach
- lack of flexibility with data sources
- subscription costs can exceed the cost of building a site
- dashboard web
- difficult to update if your processes change
Pros and cons of custom dashboards
Obviously , you have much more control with custom dashboards. You can modify them in any shape and color imaginable, extract them from any data source, and protect the data with advanced security best practices, such as user role restrictions.
But such customization comes at a cost: requires more time to develop and implement custom data dashboards; In addition, it typically requires a more significant upfront investment compared to out-of-the-box web panel solutions.
Pros:
- can be 100% optimized for your business processes
- security , appearance, mobile support etc. will depend solely on how much you want to invest
- can be upgraded if necessary
Cons:
- requires a substantial initial investment
- takes longer to deliver
- open source components cannot always be reused
Talk to an expert to decide the right approach for you
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Top 3 SaaS and Out-of-the-Box Dashboard Solutions
Google Data Studio
Top 3 SaaS and Out-of-the-Box Dashboard Solutions
Google Data Studio
Google Data Studio is a free dashboard application that data analysts and business users can use with equal efficiency.The product integrates seamlessly with Google’s marketing and consumer products, for example, Google Analytics or YouTube, and also works with databases (BigQuery, MySQL and PostgreSQL). , CSV files and social media platform.
- built-in sample reports
- custom design and styling controls
- rich visualization library
Sisense
Sisense focuses on simplifying the visualization of complex business data. This dashboard SaaS solution eliminates the need for data preparation and provides all the tools needed to visualize and analyze massive data sets without the need for IT support. Sisense works decently on fairly old computers and doesn’t need special data storage setup.
- Real-time data query
- The pre-built IoT, ML and AI components
- work with multiple, disparate data sources
QlikView
Qlik Sense is a leading business intelligence platform that simplifies I work with multiple complex data sources to provide users with actionable insights at a glance. The product is searchable across all data, supports interaction with dynamic apps, dashboards, and analytics suites.
- capture data for analytics from mobile devices
- time collaboration real
- state of the art visualizations
How to make a dashboard website?
App development Dashboard web might sound like a hackneyed venture, but it’s actually a complex business if you want your employees to truly adopt the app. Here are the steps you can take to create a dashboard app.
Step 1: Find a product that’s right for the market
As a first step, we suggest you research your website’s target audience with the dashboard. You need to narrow down their needs and pain points to understand how the dashboard web app can help them run their business more efficiently.
The best scenario for discovering this information is to conduct user surveys, observe test users working with existing tools, and conduct face-to-face interviews. The data you collect will guide the feature set of your web dashboard solution. However, before you develop your dashboard, you’ll want to create a rapid prototype, which is the next step we recommend.
Step 2: Design
All The data you collect in the first step ensures that you design a website control panel for a specific group of users. And the design in the development of such a solution is everything. So knowing what data points users need to visualize definitely helps.
As with any other software project, start developing a web dashboard by creating of preliminary schematics that are relatively easy to modify based on user comment. Wireframes are used to build a clickable prototype that is refined with tools like usertesting.com. That’s also the springboard for the transition to high-fidelity design.
Related: The Only UI/UX Guidelines You Need to Design a Winning App
Step 3: Review tools available to speed development
By leaving the second phase, you will have an interactive prototype of the dashboard optimized according to the preferences of your target audience, literally urging you to start development . However, we recommend that you spend time researching the available tool sets that can spearhead your web control panel development.
Out-of-the-box SDK and APIs
If you choose to build a web panel using an existing platform such as Looker, check its documentation to see if it provides all the necessary features, SDKs, APIs, and libraries. For example, Looker allows you to work with three SDKs prepared for different programming languages.
JavaScript Chart Libraries
JavaScript has long been a preferred tool for creating all kinds of charts. As a result, there are many open source and proprietary libraries that provide a shortcut to custom display applications. Here are some examples of libraries that allow you to create dashboard layouts:
- Gridster.js
- jQuery Gridly
- Packery
- Dazzle
Third Party Integrations
Any libraries, SDKs, or API of your choice to create a dashboard website, review its integration capabilities. How well do they work with your data sources and external tools like Tableau?
Step 4: QA
Once you have developed a dashboard , it’s time to test it with real users in a production (read client-ready) environment. In addition to checking that all features are working as expected, you should also perform stress tests to identify how many users your solution can handle.
Remember to perform regression testing to ensure that all features you have tested for development are still working perfectly And finally, spend some time on unit testing, especially if your web dashboard extends beyond desktop browsers and is mobile-friendly.
Related: Guidelines Quality Assurance: Steps, Costs, Best Practices
Step 5: Implement and Maintain
The final step, as with any mobile or web application developed To measure, is to implement the dashboard solution in a production environment, remove all test data, and set up a backup mechanism and uptime monitor to ensure users can access your product at all times. or moment.
What are you waiting for? Schedule a 30 minute consultation
How much does it cost to create your own web dashboard?
The cost of developing an app will largely depend on your project scale : If it is a personal website control panel, your budget can be within $16,000. However, if you’re looking to build an enterprise-grade solution, the price can go up to $60,000-80,000.
Remember that if you’re building a healthcare web dashboard, you may need to do that the solution is HIPAA Compliant. That automatically increases the development budget by another 80 hours / $8000.
Another good practice to reduce the development costs of a dashboard application is to choose ready-to-use components. For example, we use the Charts library and a React Native wrapper called react-native-charts-wrapper to seamlessly implement data dashboards in a cross-platform mobile app.
Read also: React Native or Swift: Which one to choose for iOS?
Our experience developing Dashboard web applications
At Topflight, we build applications Helping Companies in the healthcare and fintech sectors remain at the top of their game. To enable that, an application must display the company’s most vital data and bring it to the forefront in the most efficient way. Therefore, a dashboard is often a welcome addition in the web and mobile apps we develop.
Here are some of the more interesting dashboards we’ve created for our clients.
You & M.E. Registry for the ME/CFS Community
We created the entire platform that connects ME/CFS patients with researchers, based on data visualization. The registry consists of web applications for patients, employees of Solve M.E. and researchers, each with a different set of visualizations and a mobile patient app that includes multiple dashboards to display patient health data.
Genium: Teledermatology Platform
Genium is a dermatology platform accessible from mobile and desktop browsers. The app features engaging dashboards that help customers better understand and care for their skin, based on the interpretation of their DNA. Read the case study here.
Sherpa: fintech app
Sherpa is a smart budgeting app that connects to users’ bank accounts and analyzes your spending habits, calculates future budgets and offers professional advice to help users control their finances. An essential part of the project was the visualization of users’ budgets, spending habits and the projection of their personal financial trends. Read the case study here.
Related: Fintech Application Development Services
Medical Panel
We worked with a Fortune 100 pharmaceutical company to design and develop a dashboard for viewing and analyzing the results of a remote clinical trial study.
“A dashboard should be light, focus on the “K” in the KPIs.”
Pearl Zhu, author of the “Digital Master” series of books (25 books)
Time to create a web panel
Now you have everything you need to start creating attractive and profitable web dashboards. If you’re still unsure about some aspects of this challenging task, such as choosing the most suitable tech stack, app monetization strategies, how long app development will take, or updating an existing dashboard on your website, our team is here to help you. We are application developers in Miami, NYC, Los Angeles, request a free consultation and we will help you design, test, develop and implement a beautiful and practical dashboard.
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