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How to Create an Ecommerce Dashboard in Tableau

Cody Schneider•

Building a Tableau dashboard for your ecommerce store is one of the best ways to turn raw sales data into a clear picture of your business's health. This guide will walk you through the process step-by-step, from connecting your data to creating the essential charts you need to track performance and make smarter decisions for growth.

First, Get Your Data Ready

Before you can build anything in Tableau, you need the right raw materials. For a foundational ecommerce dashboard, you'll want to gather data on sales, customers, and products. Typically, this means exporting a few key reports from your platform, like Shopify, Magento, or WooCommerce.

You'll usually end up with one or more CSV or Excel files. Most ecommerce platforms allow you to export an "Orders" or "Sales" report. Look for a file that contains at least the following columns:

  • Order ID: A unique identifier for each transaction.

  • Order Date: The date and time the purchase was made.

  • Customer ID / Name: Information to identify unique and repeat customers.

  • Product Name: The item(s) purchased.

  • Category: The product category, if applicable.

  • Quantity: The number of units sold per line item.

  • Price / Sales: The revenue from each line item.

  • Location Data: Columns like City, State, and Country.

For this tutorial, a single Excel sheet or CSV with this kind of transactional data is all you need. Save the file somewhere you can easily find it.

Connecting Your Data to Tableau

With your data file saved, it’s time to open Tableau Desktop and connect to it. Tableau makes this part straightforward.

  1. On the start screen, look for the "Connect" pane on the left.

  2. Under the "To a File" section, select "Microsoft Excel" or "Text File" (for a CSV).

  3. Navigate to and open the ecommerce data file you just saved.

Tableau will open the "Data Source" page, giving you a preview of your data. This is your chance to make sure everything looks correct. Tableau often makes smart guesses about data types (like designating your Sales column as a number and your Order Date as a date), but you can click the icon at the top of any column (e.g., the "#" for number or calendar icon for date) to change it if needed.

If your data is clean, you're ready to start building. Click on the first sheet tab, usually named "Sheet 1," at the bottom left of the window.

Building Your Core Ecommerce Visualizations

Now for the fun part: creating the charts. We will build several separate visualizations on their own "sheets" and then combine them into a single dashboard at the end. Here are the core charts every ecommerce store owner needs.

1. Top-Level KPIs: Sales, Orders, and Average Order Value (AOV)

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) give you an immediate, high-level snapshot of performance. Let's create scorecard-style "big numbers" for your most important metrics.

Total Sales

  1. Open a new sheet in Tableau and name it "Total Sales."

  2. From the "Data" pane on the left (under "Tables"), find your Sales measure. Measures are your numeric data, like sales and quantity.

  3. Drag the Sales pill and drop it onto the "Text" mark on the Marks card.

You'll see a single number appear on an otherwise blank canvas. You can format this to make it stand out. Click on the "Text" mark again, then click the "..." button to open the editor. Here, you can make the font bigger, bold, and change the color.

Total Orders

  1. Create a new sheet and name it "Total Orders."

  2. From the "Data" pane, find your Order ID dimension. Dimensions are your categorical data, like names, dates, and IDs.

  3. Drag the Order ID pill and drop it on the "Text" mark.

  4. Right-click the "Order ID" pill that just appeared on your Marks card. In the pop-up menu, go to Measure > Count (Distinct). This tells Tableau to count each unique order ID just once.

Just like with sales, you can format this text to be large and clear.

Average Order Value (AOV)

  1. Go to the top menu and select Analysis > Create Calculated Field.

  2. Name the field "AOV".

  3. In the formula box, type the following:

SUM([Sales]) / COUNTD([Order ID])

This formula tells Tableau to divide the total sales by the total count of unique orders. Click "OK."

You now have a new measure called "AOV" in your Data pane. Create a new sheet named "AOV," drag this new "AOV" measure to the "Text" mark, and format it just like the others.

2. Sales Trend Over Time (Line Chart)

KPIs are great, but you also need to see the trends. Is revenue growing? Are there seasonal dips or weekly patterns? A line chart is perfect for this.

  1. Create a new sheet and name it "Sales Trend."

  2. Drag your Order Date dimension to the Columns shelf at the top of the workspace. By default, Tableau will probably show 'YEAR(Order Date)'. Right-click the pill and change it to "Month" (the second option, which is continuous). It should turn green. You could also choose "Week" or "Day" depending on the level of detail you need.

  3. Drag your Sales measure to the Rows shelf.

Tableau will automatically generate a line chart showing your sales trends over the chosen time period. This simple chart is fantastic for spotting things like your busiest months or the impact of a recent marketing campaign.

3. Top Selling Products (Bar Chart)

Knowing which products drive the most revenue helps you focus your marketing, inventory, and product development efforts.

  1. Create a new sheet and name it "Top Products."

  2. Drag the Product Name dimension to the Rows shelf.

  3. Drag the Sales measure to the Columns shelf.

  4. Tableau will create a horizontal bar chart. To make it more useful, click the sort icon (a small bar chart with a down arrow) at the top of the axis to arrange your products from highest to lowest sales.

  5. For better readability, you can drag your Sales measure and drop it onto the "Label" mark on the Marks card. This will add the exact sales figures to the end of each bar.

4. Sales by Location (Map Chart)

If you sell to different regions, a map visualization is a powerful way to see where your customers are. Tableau makes this incredibly easy if your data has geographic fields like country, state, or postal code.

  1. Create a new sheet and name it "Sales by State."

  2. Find a geographic dimension in your Data pane, like State or Country. You'll notice a small globe icon next to it, which means Tableau recognizes it as geographic data.

  3. Simply double-click on your State dimension. Tableau will generate a map and place a dot on each state you have data for.

  4. To show which states are driving more sales, you need to adjust the visuals. Drag the Sales measure to the Marks Card and drop it onto Size to vary the dot size according to sales or Color for a color-coded view. Adjust as necessary to get the best visual representation of sales distribution.

Putting It All Together on a Dashboard

Once you've built your individual charts (sheets), it's time to assemble them into a single, interactive dashboard.

  1. Click the New Dashboard icon at the bottom of the screen (it looks like a grid).

  2. On the left, you'll see a list of all the sheets you created (Total Sales, Sales Trend, etc.).

  3. To add a view, just drag a sheet from the list onto the empty dashboard canvas. The first view you drag in will take up the entire canvas.

  4. When you drag your second sheet in, Tableau will show you gray shaded areas where you can place it - either to the top, bottom, left, or right of the first view. This system takes a little practice but allows you to build a tiled layout quickly.

  5. Add your four KPI "big number" sheets along the top, and then place your Sales Trend, Top Products, and Map charts below them. Rearrange until you have a layout that's clean and easy to read.

Making Your Dashboard Interactive

A static dashboard is useful, but an interactive one is even better. Let's add a date filter so you can analyze performance for specific periods like "Last Quarter" or "This Month."

  1. Click on one of your charts on the dashboard, like the "Sales Trend" chart. In the top-right corner of its container, click the small dropdown arrow and select Filters > Order Date.

  2. A filter control for the date will appear on the right side of your dashboard.

  3. By default, this filter will only apply to the "Sales Trend" chart. To make it control everything, click the dropdown on the new filter control and select Apply to Worksheets > All Using This Data Source.

Now, when you adjust the date slider or select a relative date range (like "Last 30 days"), every chart on your dashboard will update dynamically. This turns your dashboard from a simple report into a powerful analysis tool.

Final Thoughts

Following these steps gives you a solid foundation for a valuable ecommerce dashboard in Tableau. You now have a repeatable process to track KPIs, analyze trends, and identify which products and regions are driving your business forward.

Building a report from scratch in a tool like Tableau takes time - you have to export the data, clean it, connect it, and then manually build each visualization. At Graphed, we created a faster way. Instead of dozens of manual steps, you can just connect your data sources like Shopify or Google Analytics once and use simple, natural language to build entire real-time dashboards in seconds, letting you get straight to the insights that grow your business.