Dashboard Best Practices: 4 Features to Perfect Your Partner Experience

Let’s face it: your partners are busy. They don’t want to spend valuable time rifling through content or searching their portal to find what they need.

There’s a better way to direct partners toward the right resources: use your dashboard. Internal research shows that 70% or more of all partners using an Allbound-hosted Partner Portal engage with the dashboard. That’s over half of your partners, eager to leverage all the amazing content and assets you’ve created for them.

Just like the homepage of your website, reaching your partners with the right message and assets upon entry guarantees they’ll have what they need to increase your channel revenue and improve their experience overall to keep them coming back.

Quick links are a collection of links to important pages, information, and more, allowing partners to find what they need quickly or complete common actions. Here, you can also link your partner to their channel representative.

On average, quick links receive the highest engagement on the partner portal dashboard, making them prime real estate for sharing critical resources. Consider linking to pages your partners frequent the most or often struggle to find.

Top Performing Quick Links to Consider

• Deal registration or lead registration
• Event calendar
• Partner onboarding, program essentials, welcome kit or walk-through video
• Help resources or support links
• FAQ
• Product news or release notes
• Marketing plan or marketing tools
• Pricing
• Feedback or contact form

Quick Link Best Practices to Keep in Mind

• Quick links are better suited for permanent CTAs. You don’t want partners to have to hunt down links they’re used to seeing on their dashboards.
• Use short, intuitive phrases – if it needs a longer explanation, it’s not for a quick link but might be better suited for a custom button!
• Use visibility rules to show only relevant links to the different segments of your partner base and create unique user experience. For example, your MSPs will likely need different resources than your VARs – don’t treat them all the same!

Discover how to optimally segment your partners. »

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Buttons are the second-most clicked-on element on a partner dashboard. These are perfect for sharing a new or short-term CTA you want to draw extra attention to since they take up extra real estate compared to quick links.

Top Performing Buttons to Consider

Knowing the products’ end-users forwards and backward is essential to creating a comprehensive marketing strategy. Do your due diligence to apply this same line of thinking to your channel partner program as well.

• Partner training & certifications
• Sales or marketing playbooks
• Quick start or onboarding resources

• Commissions or benefits
• New product releases
• Reward systems

Top Performing Buttons to Consider

• Buttons are better suited for temporary events or actions that require a CTA.
• Always add both a subtitle and description for buttons. These can be used to attract the user’s attention or to add necessary context.
• Always add a URL and double-check that it works.
• Use visibility rules to show only relevant buttons to the various segments of your partner base, creating a unique user experience.

Hero images are a great way to catch your partners’ attention whenever they log into the portal. You can help direct your partners to new resources and limited-time offers with an engaging graphic and specific copy.

Top Performing Featured Images to Consider

• Welcome messages
• Marketing campaigns on new products, trainings, or events
• New resources to support partners’ businesses
• New partner rewards, benefits, commissions, or plans
• New or limited-time promotions and offers
• News, updates, or release notes

Featured Image Best Practices to Keep in Mind

• Hero images are well-suited for temporary communication or welcome messages
• Use images in line with brand guidelines
• Always add a link as a CTA
• Ensure the image isn’t too distracting and your partner can read the title and subtitle you include
• For multiple images, use the auto-rotation option
• Use visibility rules to show only relevant images to your various partner segments, creating a unique user experience

Your partner has lots to keep track of, and remembering deadlines, events, or upcoming training sessions might not always be at the top of their list. With the calendar widget, you can provide reminders for upcoming activities, ensuring they never miss an event.

Top Performing Events to Consider

• Events (online and in-person)
• Individual or group training sessions (using segmentation)
• Deadlines or reminders (Quarter end, final date to request MDL, etc.)

Event Best Practices to Keep in Mind

• Make the event title as specific as possible.
• Include a description with all the information your partner needs, including the value they’ll get from attending the event. (Or, better yet, what they’ll miss out on by skipping the event!)
• Only show relevant events to partners based on segmentation. Your referral partners don’t care about upcoming MSP events; promoting these on their dashboards will only be confusing.

Draw inspiration from other leading channel programs leveraging their dashboard to engage partners. Explore some of the features in action with these real partner dashboards developed in Allbound.

Actu8

Actu8 makes it easy for partners to quickly register deals by including a link in the center of the page with an eye-catching graphic. Their partners will never have to hunt down deal registration within the Partner Portal.  In their dashboard, Actu8 also highlights Opportunities, Services & Resources, and quick links to educational assets.

Dialpad

Dialpad uses quick links to highlight top resources for partners, including onboarding, deal registration, training, playbooks, and more. To further emphasize deal registration and training, Dialpad has created custom buttons pointing to those pages.

Workspace365

Workspace365 uses the featured image banner to highlight the deal stages their partners can leverage for to speed up their sales cycle. Deal registration is highlighted again with custom buttons to ensure it remains top of mind for partners within the portal. Using custom buttons, Workspace365 links to their Partner Portal Welcome Kit and their learning tracks, ensuring partners can quickly find and engage with these top resources.

Your Partner Portal dashboard is a powerful tool for engaging your partners each time they sign into Allbound. Leverage quick links, featured images, custom buttons, and the calendar widget to highlight key links and assets your partners use frequently.

Discover how you can take your partner experience to the next level with Allbound. Request a demo now to learn more. Already a customer? Reach out to your CSM to discuss new ways to optimize your portal.

Dig into additional resources for supercharging your partner engagement with the help of a PRM.

• Channel Data Management: Setting Your PRM for Success — Your PRM is a powerful resource for taking your channel to the next level. Discover best practices for setting your PRM up, including eliminating manual data collection, optimizing your integrations, aligning with other teams, and more.
• Partner-Preferred Incentives: Top Rewards to Offer & Best Practices — Incentives effectively engage partners and influence them to take desired action. Discover the top rewards to motivate partners, such as gift cards, physical gifts, SPIFFs, and more.
• Partner Management Automation: How to Execute with Optimal Results — In addition to leveraging your partner portal dashboard, you can use automation within your PRM to further engage your channel. Discover how you can leverage partner automation to streamline your channel management.