Why Most Power BI Dashboards Fail (5 Simple Fixes)

TL;DR

1. Too Many Colors

The Problem

Power BI makes it easy to color everything, every bar, card, and slicer. But more color often means less clarity. When every visual screams for attention, the viewer doesn’t know where to look.

The Fix

Pick one accent color for emphasis, and make everything else neutral.

Use contrast only when it adds meaning. For example, highlight performance vs. target or positive vs. negative change.

✅ Tip: In Power BI, go to View → Themes → Customize Current Theme to set consistent colors across visuals.

2. The KPI Soup Problem

The Problem

Dashboards often turn into metric dumps — 15 KPIs squeezed into one page, each in its own card.

Users see “Revenue,” “Churn,” “Net Promoter Score,” “ARPU,” and “Cost per Lead”… and then give up.

The Fix

Group metrics by intent.

• Headline KPIs: What executives care about at a glance.
• Diagnostic KPIs: What analysts use to explain changes.
• Context KPIs: Benchmarks, trends, or YoY comparisons.

✅ Tip: Give each section a short, human-readable title — e.g., “Overall Performance” or “Customer Trends”.

3. Ignoring Hierarchy

The Problem

When every chart on a Power BI dashboard is the same size and shape, users have no sense of what’s most important. The eye wanders. You end up with a grid of visuals that look balanced but read confusingly.

The Fix

Design using intentional layout hierarchy and follow the natural eye-tracking patterns we explored in the previous article:

• Top-left corner: Should answer “How are we doing overall?” — the key metric or summary view.
• Middle area: Should answer “Why?” — charts or visuals explaining drivers and trends.
• Bottom or right side: Should provide detail and context — supporting tables or segment breakdowns.

Depending on your dashboard shape, this often follows either a Z-pattern (for landscape layouts) or an L-pattern (for tall, scrollable pages).

These mirror how people naturally scan screens from top to bottom and left to right, so structure your visuals to guide that motion intentionally.

✅ Tip: Use white space as a design tool, it’s not “empty space,” it’s breathing room for your data.

4. Cluttered Filters & Slicers

The Problem

You’ve probably seen this one: a Power BI dashboard with 10 slicers stacked along the side; region, date, product, salesperson, customer segment, and so on.

The more filters, the slower the decision.

The Fix

Apply the Pareto principle and keep only the filters users truly need.

Move the rest to a separate “Filter Panel” page or apply them as report-level filters.

✅ Tip: Use dropdown slicers (not lists) to reduce visual clutter.

5. Telling Data, Not Stories

The Problem

Dashboards often stop at showing raw numbers lie “Revenue = $1.2 M” and fail to deliver real insights. The data alone doesn’t tell users what changed or why it matters.

The Fix

Add context and narrative directly in Power BI:

• Combine KPIs with comparison metrics (“▲ 12% YoY”)
• Add text boxes for summary insights (“Q2 growth driven by Product A expansion”)
• Use Data Labels and Annotations in charts to highlight key points.

✅ Tip: A dashboard is your narrative canvas, use it to connect data points into a sequence users can follow effortlessly.