Too Many Metrics, Too Little Clarity: A Common Dashboard Design Error

Orla Thibodeau spent three weeks building what she called a complete financial overview for her e-commerce business. By the time it was finished, the dashboard had 34 charts. Revenue by channel, returns by SKU, margin by supplier, payment method breakdown, refund rate by week. She opened it every morning for about ten days. Then she stopped opening it entirely. It was exhausting to look at.

The problem with completeness as a goal

A dashboard built around completeness serves the builder, not the reader. For someone with limited time, a screen full of charts does not communicate faster - it communicates slower. The eye has nowhere to land. The brain has to do the filtering work that the design should have done in advance.

Metrics that tend to crowd out useful ones

• Vanity figures with no decision attached, such as total page views linked to revenue
• Ratios that only matter at end-of-quarter being shown daily
• Segment breakdowns for segments too small to act on individually
• Comparison periods that do not match how the business actually cycles

Orla rebuilt the dashboard around a single question: what do I need to know before 9am to decide how today should go? She landed on five figures - net revenue yesterday, outstanding invoices over 30 days, week-on-week gross margin, current cash position, and one operational alert. The dashboard now fits on a single screen without scrolling.

The reduction from 34 metrics to 5 did not mean losing information. It meant moving the other data into separate views opened only when a specific question arose. That distinction - default view versus on-demand view - is where most automated dashboards go wrong from the start.