The Definitive Guide to Building a B2B SaaS Dashboard for Smart Growth Strategies

15 handpicked PLG metrics

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been neck deep in projects this year (and it’s only the 3rd week of Q1 😅).

Most of my projects involve helping data and AI startups reach their growth and marketing goals - so today I wanted to share with you my go-to recommendations for building B2B SaaS dashboards.

If you’re building a product led growth dashboard, be sure to include these metrics

One way to knock the socks off your management team is show up at a dashboard design kick-off meeting with pre-selected metrics in hand. While your team may or may not go with your suggestions, showing up prepared with recommendations demonstrates that you’ve got leadership potential.

But in the case of building a product led growth (PLG) dashboard, you can bet your bottom-dollar that your leadership team will be absolutely floored if you present the following set of metric recommendations. (feel free to read the full blog post that accompanies this email if you’d like a deeper dive into product led growth metrics)

The north star metrics

I suggest the following metrics as your north star metrics: Payback Period and LTV/CLV.

Payback period

The Payback Period is the amount of time it takes for a company to recoup its investment in acquiring a customer. In other words, it's the time it takes for the net profits from a customer to equal the initial Customer Acquisition Cost. 

LTV/CAC ratio

Another good north star metric is the LTV/CAC Ratio, This is a key metric for understanding the long-term value of customers relative to acquisition costs.

This ratio compares the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer to the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). LTV represents the total revenue a company expects to earn from a customer throughout their relationship, while CAC is the cost of acquiring a new customer.

Acquisition metrics

When evaluating acquisition metrics, I look for trends and patterns that indicate the effectiveness of our initial user attraction strategies. The relationship between site visits, sign-ups, and the resulting CAC offers invaluable insights. 

The acquisition metrics I suggest you track are:

• Free Trial Signups (#): This measures the effectiveness of initial user attraction strategies.

• Website Visits (#): Tracks the effectiveness of online presence and marketing campaigns in driving traffic.

• Website Conversion Rate (%): This measures the conversion of site visitors to registered users. This is a measure of how well targeted your traffic is to the UVP of your product, and how effective your website is at converting visitors.

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC, $): This metric reflects the cost of acquiring new customers. 

Activation and engagement metrics

• Free-to-Paid Conversion Rate (%): This metric tracks how well your funnel is converting free users into paying customers. It’s a key measure of initial user activation.

• Feature Adoption Rate: This indicates how frequently users are engaging with various features of the product. This reflects on product value and user activation. I recommend using a bar chart to display this metric.

• Time-to-Value (TTV, #): This measures the speed at which users are able to generate value from your product in a self-serve environment. It’s an important metric for understanding early user experience and engagement. TTV is best measured in days, of course.

Retention metrics

• User Retention Rate (%): Measures how well the product keeps users engaged over time, indicating long-term user satisfaction and product fit.  This measures the rate at which a company retains its customers over a given period of time. It is calculated by subtracting the number of new customers acquired during that period from the number of customers at the end of that period, dividing by the number of customers at the start of the period, and then multiplying by 100 to get a percentage. A high retention rate, of course, indicates that more customers are staying.

• Product Stickiness (DAU/MAU, %): This indicates how often users engage with the product, a key indicator of its 'stickiness' or ongoing user engagement. A high ratio of DAU to MAU (aka; “DAU/MAU ratio”) indicates that users are returning to the product frequently, suggesting high stickiness.

• Churn Rate (%): This metric tracks the rate at which customers stop using the product, which is crucial for understanding user retention challenges. This measures the rate at which customers or subscribers stop doing business with a company over a given period of time. It is calculated by dividing the number of customers lost during that period by the initial number of customers at the start of that period. A high churn rate indicates more customers are leaving.

Growth and expansion metrics

Key growth and expansion metrics include:

• Product Qualified Leads (PQLs, %): This metric identifies which percentage of leads are highly engaged with the product and likely to convert, which is important for evaluating growth-focused marketing strategies.

• Expansion Revenue (%): This measures revenue growth from existing customers through upselling, cross-selling, or upgrades. 

Referral and advocacy metrics

Finally, referral and advocacy metrics, like Net Promoter Score (NPS), provide a window into your customer experience and loyalty. 

• Net Promoter Score (NPS, #): This metric gauges customer loyalty and satisfaction, which can indicate the potential for customer referrals and organic growth.

Here are data elements I’d use to visualize these metrics

It’s always more helpful to show rather than tell, so we went ahead and created an Equals dashboard that shows you some effective ways to visualize PLG metrics so that they’re easy to understand with just a passing glance.

Built with Equals

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Moving beyond the basics with enhanced dashboard utility

For the dashboard to be useful, you need some advanced features and integrations. 

Let’s look at a few of the bells and whistles you need to elevate your dashboard from a simple data display to a dynamic tool for strategic decision-making.

Customization and filters

If there’s a budget, it’d be ideal for your dashboard to have customization and filtering capabilities.

A one-size-fits-all approach rarely suffices in the nuanced world of SaaS metrics. 

Customization will allow each team member, from marketing to product development, to tailor the dashboard to their specific needs. Customizations could include custom views for different user segments, time periods, or product lines. 

Filters, on the other hand, enable users to drill down into the data to focus on specific metrics or time frames that are most relevant to their current objectives. This level of personalization ensures that the B2B SaaS dashboard remains relevant and useful for all stakeholders.

Real-time data and alerts

In our fast-paced industry, outdated information often causes missed opportunities and misguided strategies. 

From my perspective, the integration of real-time data feeds for your PLG dashboard is an absolute non-negotiable. 

But coupled with this, you also need a robust alert system to notify you and other team members when certain thresholds are met or when unexpected patterns emerge. Alerts like this are essential in situations where swift and proactive responses are required. Whether it’s a sudden spike in user churn or an unexpected drop in feature usage, real-time alerts help in maintaining a constant pulse on the product’s performance.

Integration with product analytics tools

For a B2B SaaS dashboard to be truly impactful, it must seamlessly integrate with other product analytics tools. This integration ensures a continuous and automated flow of data, thus eliminating the need for manual updates and reducing the risk of errors. 

Whether it’s pulling in data from customer relationship management systems, marketing platforms, or user feedback tools, integration is key to achieving a holistic view of your product’s performance and customer experience.

I really like Equals Dashboards for these capabilities, because – with Equals – you can get all the integrations you need for your B2B SaaS dashboard, in an environment that makes it easy for your development team to build and deliver.

Other Equals features that I love:

✅ 𝐄𝐚𝐬𝐞-𝐨𝐟-𝐮𝐬𝐞: With its intuitive interface, you can easily connect a variety of data sources like PostgreSQL, Snowflake, and Stripe. The Query Builder and SQL Editor cater to both beginners and advanced users, allowing for complex data manipulations without the need for extensive SQL knowledge. 

✅ 𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲: Equals’ pivot tables, charts, and Excel-based formulas bring a familiar yet enhanced experience to data analysis. 

✅ 𝐀𝐈-𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞: Equals' AI Assist feature offers capabilities like automated text summaries and smart dashboard generation. 

✅ 𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐥𝐲-𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞: Collaborative features like multiplayer collaboration, comments, and access controls make Equals an ideal tool for team projects. 

✅ 𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: With Equals, you can transform raw data into insightful reports effortlessly, and on auto-pilot.

As you can see, enhancing your B2B SaaS dashboard involves a strategic blend of customization, real-time data, and seamless integrations. These enhancements help transform your dashboard from a static data repository to a dynamic tool that you and others can use for improved decision-making. 

Feel free to borrow the recommendations from this blog post when instructing your executional team on growth dashboard requirements so that you can position yourself as the proactive analytics engineer that we both know you are.

Warm Regards,

Lillian Pierson

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At Data-Mania, we offer fractional CMO support to B2B tech companies. We specialize in go-to-market & product-led growth for high-growth data and AI startups. Learn more by visiting our website.

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