Custom dashboards for stats tracking

Hey everyone, I’m popping in with a new question and this is more regarding stats. So I have been making use of Hotjar (free version) and that’s a nice tool to track funnels and limited user interaction with the system. However, I’m sure everyone knows that there is much more stats than just funnels and behavior.

Working on a travel planning platform and there are a lot of stats and behaviors that I need tracked to see behaviors over time. However google analytics only gives me a few things that I need like device usage, screen resolutions etc.

So instead of adding a lot of scripts, I am thinking about building a custom dashboard that tracks the data real-time and updates the dashboard with stats. Probably have some kind of archive setting to archive each month or something like that. But I feel like this is MUCH easier than excel and constant queries.

Is this something that is commonly used or does anyone have any experience with some insights?

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This is a great question as I happen to be working on a dashboard which I’m hoping will be customisable. Will follow this thread closely. Dashboards should compile all individual stats and give a quick overview of what the user wants to see. Google Analytics is an obvious place to see an overview of site statistics. This will also depend on how it’s being built - will the user want to see real-time stats or will a day/week/month/year overview be sufficient?

Also, it’s about using the most appropriate chart or graph for that given statistic: For example, if you’re observing something over time - you’d want to use a line graph. If you want a breakdown of the total number of something - you’d display that as a pie chart.

Do you want to compare two charts together? Do you want just a snap shot? Do you want the user to view the real table of statistics or will the chart explain that?

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@annabelle_andre, thanks for your feedback.

Great points that you have mentioned there. To elaborate on what I want to achieve: I think a snapshot of main activities, browsers, screen resolutions and other activities/interactions would be great.

Our system has quite a lot of features that has been built with a lot of assumptions. By using this dashboard, I’d like to make a few decisions regarding

  • Screen sizes (as our current smallest screen size is not even functioning properly and no one seems to notice),
  • broadly speaking averages. People use our system to plan trips and present options etc so I’d like to track averages of that.
  • We have placed where people capture additional notes and I’ve only recently discovered that our text area is only 3 lines, yet the average note is about 5 lines,
  • etc etc etc

So my plan is to track the features as we release and keep an eye on hand-picked things that I’d like to track without having to quickly query and then calculate averages etc.

At this point in time, figures alone will already be a huge step in the right direction and having all the charts later-on would be huge benefit BUT first iteration could be very basic.

Any take on my approach and it’s correspondence with your idea of the dashboard?

@brendin I see what you mean now. You’re tracking how people use your site and therefore require a dashboard to see what needs improving. The dashboard I’m working on is observing the system and setting reminders when to perform actions. As I’ve mentioned previously - the dashboard I’m working on will need to display data as charts for quick feedback.

Do let keep us up to date on how you’re tackling your issues. Designing a dashboard is new to me so will like to hear and learn from your experience :slight_smile: