How to build a product dashboard in Metabase
· 60 minutes
Guests
Yiying Cheng
Metabase Enthusiast
Yiying has over a decade of experience in Data Science & Analytics, working across both large enterprises and high-growth startups. As a founding member of Confluent’s (CFLT) data team, she built and led the Product and Growth Data Science team, scaling their self-serve business 10x through product-led growth. Yiying has also worked at LinkedIn and Vanta (backed by Sequoia and YC), with extensive experience partnering with product and go-to-market teams to leverage data to drive business growth.
Margaret Rimek
Marketing Manager, Metabase
Hey, I’m Margaret from Metabase, and I’ll be your host for this one! A startup founder in the past, I’m now focused on helping more people discover and enjoy Metabase. 🤗
Summary
In a recent webinar, Yiying Chen, a Metabase enthusiast, showed how to visualize key product metrics in a Metabase dashboard.
A good product dashboard helps you see what’s working, spot areas for improvement, and start asking the right questions.
What makes a great dashboard?
A great dashboard isn’t just a collection of charts; it’s a tool to tell a story about your business. Keep it clear and focused: show the metrics that matter most, avoid clutter, and make it easy for anyone to understand what they’re looking at. Think of your dashboard as a launchpad for deeper analysis, highlighting the overall health of your business without relying on vanity metrics.
Using the AARRR framework
To build a dashboard, Yiying followed the AARRR framework (also known as the Pirate Metrics framework), which is a handy way to organize the key metrics. It covers the five stages of your customer journey:
- Acquisition. How do people find your product? Look at metrics like sign-ups or website traffic from different channels.
- Activation. Are users reaching the “aha moment” where they see your product’s value?
- Retention. How many users are sticking around, and are they coming back regularly?
- Referral. Are users recommending your product to others, helping it grow organically?
- Revenue. How is your product generating revenue, and how can you expand that?
Steps to build a product dashboard in Metabase
1. Start with your key metrics
Before you add a single chart, figure out which metrics you actually need to track. For acquisition, that might be sign-ups over time and which channels drive them. For retention, maybe it’s active users or churn rates. Focus on the questions you’re trying to answer.
2. Visualize your data thoughtfully
Metabase makes it easy to create visualizations that answer specific questions. Want to track sign-ups by channel? Use a stacked bar chart. Curious about monthly trends? Add a line chart with trend lines for clarity. The goal is to make patterns obvious at a glance.
3. Dive into the conversion funnel
Want to see how users move through key stages, like sign-up to activation? A combo chart can help you track volume and conversion rates side by side, so you can identify where users are dropping off.
4. Add an executive summary
Sometimes, you just need the TL;DR. Include a high-level summary at the top of your dashboard with key metrics and trends to give everyone a quick snapshot of performance.
5. Organize your dashboard
Group metrics under clear headings to make your dashboard easy to navigate. A clean layout isn’t just nice to look at—it helps cross-functional teams find the information they need faster.
Smarter dashboards, better decisions
Metabase makes it simple to build dashboards that don’t just look good but actually help you make smarter decisions. Focus on the metrics that matter, keep your visuals clear, and remember: your dashboard is only as good as the questions it helps you answer. Want to dive deeper? Check out our recorded webinars, where we break down topics like map visualizations, time series analysis, improving your line and bar charts, and more to help you get the most out of Metabase.
