Build a Low-Code Dashboard for Your Startup

As a startup founder, you wear many hats and have limited resources at your disposal, especially when it comes to engineering talent. But in order to make data-driven decisions and keep a pulse on the health of your business, you need a way to track and visualize your key metrics. That‘s where building a dashboard comes in.

While the thought of developing a custom dashboard from scratch may seem daunting, the good news is that with the rise of low-code development platforms, it‘s easier than ever for startups to create powerful dashboards without extensive coding knowledge. In this post, we‘ll explore the benefits of a low-code approach, walk through how to build a dashboard using a tool like Retool or Appsmith, and share some examples and best practices.

Why Use a Low-Code Approach?

Low-code development platforms allow users to build software using visual interfaces with basic logic and drag-and-drop elements, rather than extensive coding. This empowers a wider range of people, like startup founders and business analysts, to develop applications and automate workflows without relying on engineers.

The key benefits of a low-code approach for building dashboards include:

1. Speed: Rather than spending months developing a dashboard from the ground up, you can create a powerful one in a matter of days and quickly get it in the hands of your team.

2. Efficiency: Low-code is ideal when you have limited engineering resources. It lets you build a solution with the talent you already have in-house.

3. Customization: Compared to off-the-shelf analytics tools, low-code platforms give you the flexibility to connect to all your data sources and customize the user experience and design to fit your brand and needs.

4. Iteration: As your startup evolves, so will the metrics you track. Low-code makes it easy to continue enhancing your dashboard over time.

Choosing a Low-Code Platform

There are several great low-code platforms that are well-suited for building dashboards. Some of the most popular options include:

• Retool: Retool is a leading low-code platform for building internal tools, including dashboards. It‘s easy to connect to any database or API and offers a wide library of pre-built UI components. Pricing starts at $50/month for 1 developer, with a free tier for personal projects.

• Appsmith: Appsmith is an open-source low-code platform for building admin panels, CRUD apps, and dashboards. You can host it yourself or use their cloud version. Pricing starts at $10/month/developer for the cloud edition, and self-hosting is free.

• AirTable: AirTable is a popular no-code platform for building collaboration applications and simple dashboards. While it doesn‘t offer all of the flexibility and customization of other tools, it‘s known for its ease of use. Pricing starts at $10/user/month.

• Notion: Notion is an all-in-one workspace for notes, project management, and knowledge bases that also offers some simple dashboard capabilities like databases, kanban boards, and calendars. Pricing starts at $8/user/month.

When evaluating low-code platforms for your startup dashboard, consider factors like ease of use, customization options, pricing, and scalability. It‘s also important to check which databases and API integrations each platform supports to ensure it will work with your existing data sources.

Building Your Dashboard

Now that we‘ve covered the why and what of low-code dashboards, let‘s dive into the how. We‘ll walk through an example of building a dashboard in Retool, but the general process is similar across platforms.

Step 1: Connect Your Data

The first step is to connect your dashboard to your data sources, which may include databases like PostgreSQL or MongoDB, APIs like Stripe or Google Analytics, or even spreadsheets. Retool supports direct connections to most common databases and offers a flexible REST API connector for pulling in data from virtually any source.

Step 2: Configure Your Components

Once your data is flowing in, it‘s time to set up the visual components of your dashboard. Most low-code platforms offer a drag-and-drop interface for adding elements like charts, tables, metrics, and filters.

In Retool, you can explore the component library and drag the elements you need onto the canvas. For example, you might add a "Big Number" component to display total revenue, a line chart to show monthly active user growth, and a table of your top customers.

Step 3: Set Up Interactions

To make your dashboard interactive, you can configure components to react to user actions like filtering, sorting, or button clicks. Many platforms offer built-in actions that you can customize using basic logic.

For instance, you might add a date range filter that updates your charts and tables when changed, or a button that triggers an API call to send an email or Slack message.

Step 4: Style and Customize

Finally, you can customize the look and feel of your dashboard to match your brand. Most low-code tools offer some level of UI styling, letting you set the colors, fonts, spacing, and more. Some even support custom CSS for more granular control.

Retool provides a theme editor where you can tweak the styles across your entire app, as well as options to customize spacing and sizing on individual components.

Dashboard UI Best Practices

As you build your low-code dashboard, keep these UI/UX best practices in mind:

1. Choose the right metrics: Be selective about the data you include. Focus on the key metrics that are most important to your goals and avoid cluttering the dashboard with vanity metrics.

2. Provide context: Raw numbers alone can be hard to interpret. Include comparisons or benchmarks to provide context, like month-over-month percent change, progress towards a goal, or industry averages.

3. Organize logically: Group related metrics together and use clear headers and labels. A good framework is to move from high-level to more detailed data as you go down the page.

4. Highlight important data: Use color, size, and positioning to draw attention to your most important numbers. For less important metrics, using more muted colors and smaller font sizes.

5. Keep it simple: Avoid the temptation to add too many components, colors, or decorative elements. A clean and focused dashboard is easier for viewers to quickly scan and comprehend.

6. Make it mobile-friendly: With more and more work happening on the go, it‘s critical that your dashboard is easy to view and interact with on mobile devices. Choose a responsive layout that adapts well to smaller screen sizes.

Dashboard Examples for Startups

The specific metrics you track will vary based on your industry and business model, but here are a few examples of common startup dashboards by department:

Sales Dashboard

• Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
• New bookings
• Sales pipeline coverage
• Average sales cycle
• Rep activity and performance

Marketing Dashboard

• Leads by source
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Conversion rate by funnel stage
• Organic vs. paid mix
• Tests and experiments

Product Dashboard

• Daily active users (DAU) / monthly active users (MAU)
• Feature usage and adoption
• Retention rate
• NPS scores
• A/B test results

Customer Support Dashboard

• Number of tickets
• Response and resolution times
• Ticket volume by category
• CSAT scores
• Negative sentiment analysis

Limitations of Low-Code Dashboards

While low-code dashboards are a great solution for many startups, they do have some limitations to keep in mind as you scale:

1. Performance: Low-code platforms are designed to prioritize ease of use over performance, so they may face issues as you deal with higher volumes of data and more concurrent users. You may need to eventually graduate to a more powerful business intelligence or custom-coded solution.

2. Customization: Although low-code tools are quite flexible, you may still run into constraints on how much you can customize the UI to meet your specific needs. Some platforms allow custom CSS, but you won‘t have the total control you would with building from scratch.

3. Integrations: Each platform has a different ecosystem of built-in integrations. While most low-code platforms offer API connectors to pull in data from virtually any source, you may have to resort to custom code for any pre-built integrations that are not supported.

4. Cost: While certainly more affordable than hiring a team of engineers to develop a dashboard from scratch, the cost of low-code platforms can add up, especially as you add more users. Make sure to forecast pricing at scale and weigh it against other options.

Conclusion

Dashboards are an essential tool for startups to stay on top of their core metrics, but building one doesn‘t have to be a massive undertaking. With the rise of low-code platforms, founders and business users can create powerful, interactive dashboards with basic technical knowledge.

The key is to choose the right platform for your specific needs, follow dashboard design best practices, and be aware of the limitations and costs as you grow. Pick metrics that matter, iterate as you learn, and customize your dashboard to provide actionable insights for your full team. Before you know it, you‘ll have a dashboard to help drive your startup in the right direction.