10 Tips to Make Your Excel Dashboards Look Professional

Introduction

Excel dashboards are, in simple terms, a single, all-in-one interface that consolidated important data into a condensed visualization. Whether you’re a small business, global enterprise, or student, Excel dashboards can help to organize large amounts of data in a single, accessible location. When created properly, Excel dashboards can look sleek, professional, and provide essential data in an easy-to-understand way.

For anyone who’s interested in learning more about Excel dashboards and how to make them look great, this blog post offers ten tips for making your dashboard look professional. From choosing the right colors to organizing your dashboard, these tips will help you to make sure your dashboard looks polished and effective.

Choosing a Professional Color Scheme

A successful dashboard relies heavily on an attractive and effective color scheme to draw in users and to reduce fatigue. Choosing the right colors to create a professional dashboard can be daunting without guidance. To take the stress out of this stage of dashboard development we suggest the following points.

Utilize Color Scheme Tips

To begin, note that a dashboard should involve the use of just two or three colors. Too many colors can be distracting and confusing. When choosing your colors be sure to utilize the 60/30/10 split rule in order to ensure a harmonious blend. This rule suggests that 60% of the dashboard should contain the primary color, 30% should feature the secondary color, and 10% should comprise accent colors.

Select Appropriate Colors

Once the rule has been established, the next step should be to select appropriate colors. Here are a few tips to ensure you make the right choices:

• Ensure the colors provide adequate contrast.
• Use classic designs over trendy ones for a professional look.
• Adjust the levels of tint and brightness to set the tone.
• Complement the colors with a muted background.
• Consider the type of audience that will be viewing the dashboard.
• For tables, select non-intrusive patterned backgrounds.
• Include both light and dark elements to give depth.

Adding Visualizations

Having the right visuals helps to make a great impression and can make data much more understandable and easier to read. Visuals can compare, contrast, and draw attention to the most important pieces of information in your dashboard. In order to improve the appearance of your dashboards, here are a few strategies you should consider when adding visualizations.

Utilizing Visualization Best Practices

When adding visualizations to your dashboard, you should consider utilizing visualization best practices. This includes keeping the design simple with few colors and fonts, limiting the number of elements and columns, and ensuring that all data points are accurately represented. You should also ensure that all of your visuals are easy to read and understand, and that they make sense in the context of the dashboard as a whole.

Selecting Appropriate Data Points to Visualize

When selecting data points to visualize, it is important to think about what information you want to communicate to your audience. You should consider the types of visualizations that best serve your purpose, such as bar graphs, line graphs, or pie charts. Additionally, you should select data points that are representative of the entire dataset. This will help to ensure that your visuals accurately depict the information and that they are easy to interpret.

• Keep the design simple with few colors and fonts
• Limit the number of elements and columns
• Ensure all data points are accurately represented
• Select types of visualizations that serve your purpose
• Select data points that are representative of the entire dataset

Choosing Chart Types

Knowing which type of chart to use for which kind of data is an important step when creating effective dashboards. Learn about the types of charts available and choose the best suited for your data.

a. Understand Types of Charts

There are many chart types available for displaying data and some types of data require specialized charts to accurately portray the information. The most common type of charts used in Excel dashboards are column charts, bar charts, line charts, and pie charts. You can also use combination chart types, like clustered column chart, area chart, and scatter plot chart.

b. Select Appropriate Chart Type

Choose the chart type that is suited to the data you are presenting. A bar chart is best suited to categorical data, while a line chart can be used to show trends over time. Pie charts are most appropriate for single data values or proportions while a clustered column chart can be used to compare two different sets of data.

Utilizing Grid Lines

Grid lines are an important tool to utilize when creating professional Excel dashboards. Grid lines help create structure, breaking up data into accessible blocks and cells. With clear, purposeful lines dividing the content, people are able to easily navigate dashboards and have greater access to the content.

Understand the Purpose of Grids

Before making any changes to the gridlines, it is important to first understand the purpose of their use in Excel dashboards. Gridlines can serve three primary functions: outline, differentiate and organize. Outlining the sections of the dashboard with gridlines helps to create a visual separation between each section. This makes it easier for viewers to immediately understand that there are several distinct sections or ‘blocks’ and what data each one contains. Gridlines can also differentiate important information or content from less important, such as by colour. Using colours to differentiate information allows viewers to quickly access the most important and most relevant data within the dashboard. Lastly, gridlines are useful for organizing data, allowing viewers to easily understand what content belongs in what sections. Without gridlines, data may be presented in a haphazard and confusing manner.

Edit Gridlines

Once the purpose of gridlines is understood, they can be edited to meet the needs of the dashboard. Depending on the overall look desired, gridlines may appear in uniformed blocks, sections or lines across the dashboard. When creating a block look, all the gridlines in each section should be the same, with no changes in line type, thickness or colour. On the other hand, when creating sections, separate gridlines should be used to join adjoining sections. Finally, when creating individual lines, colours may be changed to emphasize certain sections or to call out important data within the dashboard.

• Line type: Dashed, dotted or solid
• Line weight: Thin, medium or thick
• Colour: Variety of colors to choose from

Adding Logos and Customizations

When creating Excel dashboards, customizations not only add visual appeal, but also provide a professional and branded touch. Here are a few tips on how to add logos and customizations to your Excel dashboards.

Understand Impact of Logos

Your logo is the brand, so it's important to be aware of how it impacts your overall design. Make sure the logo isn't too large, otherwise it will overwhelm the report, as well as make it difficult to interpret. Additionally, be mindful of the colors that you use, again to ensure that the logo isn't too distracting.

Utilize Appropriate Logo Types

When adding a logo to your Excel dashboard, it's important to use the correct file type and size. For example, the most commonly used file types are .jpg and .png, but .gif and .bmp are also acceptable. Additionally, logos should be low-resolution (72dpi) for optimal performance on web-based dashboards.

Additionally, it's important to ensure that the logo is sized appropriately. Most logos should have a width of at least 500 pixels, so that it doesn't look distorted when scaled down or used on smaller screens.

Conclusion

Dashboards are a great visualization tool to quickly interpret and analyze data. The goal of a good dashboard is to present data in such a way that viewers can quickly grasp the information presented and make informative decisions based off the data. By following the 10 tips provided in this article, you can ensure your Excel dashboards look professional and communicate data efficiently.

From organizing the layout, to choosing the right font, color, and graph types; taking the extra time to create a professional looking dashboard will not only show off your data in a more appealing way, but can help to better summarize and communicate your points. Additionally, creating a dashboard in Excel is easy for most users, allowing anyone to create beautiful and reflective visuals.

Through this post, we learned the importance of creating a professional looking Excel dashboard, as well as the tips on how to go about doing so. We discussed the benefits of Excel dashboards and the steps you can take to make your visuals stand out and present data accurately.

A proper dashboard should be visually appealing, easy to understand, and consistent in its layout and design. With the tips provided in this post, you can ensure your readers quickly grasp the important data provided, and make key decisions efficiently.