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The history books credit William Playfair as the inventor of the bar chart. Playfair used this type of diagram to represent one year of exports and imports from Scotland.
Today, the bar graph is one of the most common and easily understood types. Not only is it one of the first graphs you learn in school, but it is also one of the most versatile options, which lends a hand to it being so popular.
Bar charts are handy when you need to display categorical and numerical variables together, making them a useful chart when visualizing campaign data.
In this how-to guide, you’ll explore:
Let’s start breaking down the bars!
You’re probably already familiar with the basics of a bar chart, but here is a quick refresher course in case you slept through all your math classes as a kid.
Definition: At its core, a bar chart is defined as “a diagrammatic representation of data in quantities,” which is a roundabout way of saying it is a diagram showing you different data categories and their quantities.
The size of the bars makes it easy to compare and contrast these quantities. Each bar’s length or height is proportionally equivalent to the amount or frequency of the data category it represents.
Bars can be vertical or horizontal. In some cases, bars are shown in clusters to represent different items within the same category. Bars can also be stacked to represent two or more quantities.
Typically, bar graphs feature two axes. The bars are plotted on one axis, while the other expresses the value of each bar.
In this section, you’ll look at ChartExpo, an add-on for Google Sheets. You’ll learn the basics of this plugin and how you can use it to create several bar chart examples.
ChartExpo was designed to offer spreadsheet users more charting options. Both Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets have a noticeable deficiency in ways that you can visualize data. ChartExpo aims to correct this by offering an extensive library of chart options.
Many of ChartExpo’s visualizations are designed to handle digital marketing and PPC campaign data. There is no complex coding required, just an intuitive, straightforward interface. Marketers are busy enough as is!
The goal of ChartExpo is to help marketers make sense of their oversized and overly complex spreadsheets. PPC charts and marketing visualizations have the power to translate mind-numbing walls of numbers (AKA spreadsheets) into visuals that tell the story behind the data.
While ChartExpo is available for both Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, this guide’s information is catered to Google Sheets users.
There are two methods to installing the ChartExpo add-on for Google Sheets.
The first method is to visit the Google Workspace Marketplace and enter “ChartExpo” into the search bar.
Click on the ChartExpo tool and then press the blue Install bar on the resulting page.
This will begin the installation process. You may have to log in to your Google account and accept the plugin’s permissions. Once that is done, the add-on will install and be ready for use the next time you open Google Sheets.
Alternatively, you can download ChartExpo directly from the Google Sheets App. To get started, click on Add-ons in the top toolbar.
In the small menu that appears, press the option to Get add-ons.
Search for ChartExpo in the bar and click the ChartExpo tool when it appears in the results.
Press the blue Install button. Again, you will have to accept some permissions and you may have to confirm your Google account.
Once you have ChartExpo installed, you can access it by pressing Add-ons in the top toolbar once more.
Now when you click Add-ons, you’ll see the ChartExpo option.
When you click Open, the ChartExpo menu will appear along the right side of your spreadsheet.
Once you click on the large, circled ‘+’ sign to begin creating a new chart. This will open the ChartExpo library of charts.
You can explore the different charting categories, as pictured above. Or, you can use the search bar to find the type of chart you desire. For instance, you could search for “bar” to see all of the different bar charts examples available with ChartExpo.
There are different types of bar charts/graphs. A bar graph compares different categories, the bars can be vertical or horizontal. Here is a list of different bar chart examples.
Let’s learn about how to create the above mentioned bar graph examples in detail.
A horizontal bar chart is similar to the examples from earlier, except that the axes are switched. The categories appear along the Y-axis and list from left-to-right across the chart, while the numerical frequency data appears on the X-axis.
For your PPC campaigns, let’s say you want to measure how many clicks you netted in a week. Your horizontal bars will represent each day of the week and the number of clicks for each day will dictate the size of the bars. Your spreadsheet data should resemble the following:
Your first column will be your days of the week, while the second column will be your click data.
Once you have your spreadsheet ready, you can open ChartExpo (same instructions as earlier). Then, choose the PPC Charts category and click Bar Chart Horizontal. Alternatively, you can search for Bar Chart Horizontal and select it that way.
You’ll be asked to select the sheet you’d like to use for the chart. For this example, you’ll want to choose Sheet1 because that’s the spreadsheet with the data.
Then, you’ll click Add new metric and select your Clicks column.
Next, click Add new dimensions. This time, you’ll select your categorical data (days of the week).
With all of your data selected and the right bar chart type chosen, you’re ready to click Create Chart.
Here is what the resulting chart might look like, depending on your data.
Since this guide has already talked in detail about this chart’s structure and how to read it, you don’t need to spend much time on this subject. To recap:
By comparing the lengths of the bars, you can immediately obtain insights from the data.
With this information, you can assume that it’s best to target customers with marketing messages early in the week. Since Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are the most active days, you should spend the majority of your ad budget here.
You can display the same information above but as vertical bars. This is the exact type of chart that you saw earlier in this guide. It is also sometimes referred to as a “column chart” because the bars are arranged as vertical columns.
The process to prepare the data for a vertical bar chart is the same for a horizontal one. There should be two columns: one with your categories and the other with your count or frequency data.
Again, the process is the same as the horizontal bar chart. You’re going to open ChartExpo and click on PPC Charts. The only difference is that this time you will select Bar Chart Vertical.
You will then select your sheet again, place Clicks under Add new metric and your days categories for Add New Dimension.
If you get stuck, here are some step-by-step screenshots to help:
After you enter your data, the Create Chart button will turn from gray to orange.
Click it to see the finished vertical bar chart.
You should have no problem reading this bar chart example and understanding the information.
Here are some base insights you can glean from the chart:
By understanding which days of the week generate the most clicks, you can better understand how to allocate your ad budget and align your strategies to match the points of highest activity.
A grouped bar chart, also known as a cluster bar chart or multi-series bar chart, looks at multiple items within the same category. Essentially, you’re looking at the numbers for two categorical variables inside the same grouping, instead of just one.
In other words, you’re adding a second dimension to the data.
Let’s say you have a Google Ads campaign focused on selling mobile phones. You have 9 target keywords that you’ve been working on. You want to see if your performance this month is better or worse than last, in terms of clicks.
Your spreadsheet should look something like this:
Notice that each of the 9 keywords is listed twice in Column A. This is to show the data for both the previous and current month, as shown in Column B.
Finally, Column C is our clicks data.
Open ChartExpo, as explained earlier, and open the PPC Charts category. This time, you’re going to click on the Grouped Bar Chart.
Select your Sheet Name.
Add Clicks as your metric, just as you’ve done in the last two bar chart examples.
Click on Add new dimension and select Column A with your keywords.
To add the second dimension, you’re going to click Add new dimension a second time. This will allow you to add your B Column as the second dimension.
Click Create Chart and your final result should look something like this:
Adding this extra dimension to the data opens the door to even greater insights than if you used a traditional vertical or horizontal bar chart.
Not only can you identify which keywords are producing the highest amount of clicks, but you can also compare how performance has increased or decreased. With the grouped bar chart example, you can see that:
These insights reflect that your recent efforts have paid off. Perhaps you increased your Quality Scores or changed ad copy, but the results are evident — more clicks!
Also, how keywords move up and down, in terms of the total number of clicks, tells of how your audiences are searching and what terms they are using. Even your most popular keywords can lose popularity. It is crucial to track these kinds of changes on a week-to-week or month-to-month basis.
A stacked bar comparison chart is similar to a grouped bar chart. The difference is that bars are stacked on top of each other, instead of being placed next to one another.
The bar stacked comparison chart can compare multiple values. This is very helpful for PPC campaign management because you can compare keywords based on various metrics, instead of one at a time. This gives you a more complete view of your performance.
Continuing with the scenario above, 9 keywords related to a mobile phone store. In the previous bar chart example, clicks were compared between two periods. You’ll compare the same 9 keywords across cost, impressions, clicks and conversions in this chart.
To achieve this, you need a slightly more robust spreadsheet than the past examples.
Open ChartExpo again and open the PPC Charts category. For this chart, click on the Bar Stacked Comparison Chart.
As always, enter your Sheet Name to get started.
Next, you need to begin adding your metric data. Bear in mind, Column B represents your metric categories. This is not what you want to enter as your actual metrics. For this chart, you want to enter Column D — your measure or count data — for Add new metric.
Next, you will have to click Add new dimension and select each category, starting with your keywords in Column A and ending with your time period data in Column C.
Once finished, press Create Chart and take a look at your finished result!
There is a lot of data and plenty of insights to unpack here. This is a great chart because you can see all of your selected keywords and how they perform for a range of different metrics.
There are a lot of different ways you can read the data. You can go line-by-line and decide whether the performance of the keywords (impressions, clicks and conversions) is enough to offset the costs.
Alternatively, you can try and identify your best and worst performers based on these performance metrics. Pay particular attention to high spikes in certain metrics, especially costs and conversions.
You don’t want to overpay for keywords that aren’t performing and you also want to know which ones are producing a high amount of conversions.
In the above bar stacked comparison chart, several interesting insights appear:
The longer you study this chart, the more insights you find!
When you want to compare two metrics side-by-side, the adjacent bar chart is a great resource. For PPC marketing, this helps you compare CTR to CPC values, cost per conversion to conversion value and other metrics that share a close relationship.
For this bar chart example, let’s say you want to compare CPC and CTR of your various keywords in a side-by-side view. This allows you to quickly see the difference between these two metrics for every keyword on your list.
The spreadsheet data for an adjacent bar chart is relatively easy to create and organize because you’re only comparing two items. Your first column will be each keyword that you want to analyze. Then, you’ll have a column for CPC data and another for CTR.
Fill in the numerical values of each and you’re ready to go.
Now it is time to open ChartExpo and find the Comparative Analysis Charts category. There you will be able to select Adjacent Bar Chart
As always, select the Sheet Name that you’ll be using.
Next, click Add new metric and enter your column B numerical values. For our sample, it is the CTR data. Then, you’ll repeat this process but add Column C (CPC values).
With both metrics entered, all you need to do is tap Add new dimension and select your first column with your keywords.
Now you can Create Chart at the bottom of the menu to see your finished visualization. It should look something like this:
With these two metrics set right next to one another, it’s a bit like looking at the two sides of the same coin. It’s a very easy viewpoint to see how each keyword is performing for these two crucial metrics.
Using the sample data, here are some quick insights you can draw:
ChartExpo includes a number of proprietary charts that you can only find with this tool, such as the hierarchical bar chart. This chart presents data in two hierarchy levels. At the top of the chart, there is the share of percentages across all categories. The remaining bars are subcategories.
As a hierarchy, the most relevant data is listed at the top of the chart. By arranging the information in such a way, it is easy to see what’s most significant and takes priority over the other categories.
Businesses often find themselves marketing and advertising across multiple social media pages to build brand awareness. This can be challenging because you have data coming from many different social media platforms. Bringing it all together takes some time — and a great spreadsheet.
If you wanted to measure traffic across your different social media accounts by browser type, you’d start with your social media sites in Column A, repeating them for each browser type you want to track. These browser types will be listed in a repeating order in Column B. Lastly, your traffic data is entered into Column C.
With the spreadsheet finished, it is time to open ChartExpo. You’ll find the Hierarchical Bar Chart under the General Analysis Charts category.
Start by selecting your Sheet Name.
Tap Add new metric and enter your numerical traffic values for each combination of social media site and browser type.
Next, you need to click Add new dimension and enter your Column A data (social media site categories). Repeat this process to add your browser types in Column B.
Click on Create Chart at the bottom of the ChartExpo tool.
Your final chart will look as follows:
Since this is not a typical bar chart, here is a brief breakdown of how to read the insights.
The first area to look at are the bars along the left side of the chart. This is the top of your hierarchy — your social media sites. You’ll notice that they are listed in descending order of total traffic created.
Moving from left to right, the browser types are placed alongside each social media platform. These subcategories are listed in order of most to least traffic created.
With the hierarchical chart, you can see which social media sites contribute the most to your traffic and the browsers that are most popular and impactful for generating that traffic.
Using the sample data, here are a few insights you can extract:
Understanding how different social media sites and browsers access your content and website can help you better optimize your strategies. You can look at your social media sites with low traffic and determine new ways to boost those channels’ effectiveness.
A dual-axis grouped bar chart includes two axes that represent metrics with dramatically different ranges of values. This is common in PPC marketing. For instance, suppose you wanted to compare the number of clicks to your total costs for a sample of keywords. Your costs may range from $0 to $100, while your clicks are going to range from 0 to 2,000.
Without the dual-axis grouped bar chart, these two different scales would make it impossible to create a grouped bar chart to express this comparison.
For the sake of this bar chart example, let’s say you want to compare your clicks to your impressions. Typically, you’ll have a much higher number of impressions compared to clicks. Lots of people will see your ads, but only a small fraction will actually click them.
Here is a sample spreadsheet to get you started:
For this chart, you need three columns.
As always, get started by opening ChartExpo. You’ll find the Dual Axis Bar Chart option under General Analysis Charts.
Select the Sheet Name that you want to visualize.
Next, enter your count data (Column C) under the Add new metric section.
For the Add new dimension option, you’ll first select your keyword column. This is your primary topic.
Now you need to enter your subtopic; this is your metric category data in Column B.
You’re now ready to create your chart.
Here is what the finished product should look like:
You’ll notice that there is a top and a bottom axis. Each axis corresponds to a different color bar. In this bar chart example, the blue bars follow the bottom axis range, while the green bars follow the top one.
Remember, the size of the bar represents how significant the value is. The two axes allow you to compare each keyword’s significance for the two metric categories, despite these metrics using different scales.
You can immediately see that keyword5 is the most significant because it has the highest number of clicks and impressions.
Survey feedback is one of the most valuable resources to a marketer. All of your data and insights are useful, but the easiest way to know how your target customers feel is to ask them! Thanks to review sites, most businesses have plenty of survey feedback data to work with.
The problem is finding a way to visualize that data, especially when feedback is given in open-ended responses. The Score Bar Chart is ideal for this challenge. It offers a complete view of your customer’s opinions, even when hidden in a pool of textual information.
A hospital gives discharged patients a survey to fill out that asks them to rate certain aspects of their experience, such as the services provided, doctors, care given, etc. They want to be able to chart this data to see how they rank for each topic.
This is the spreadsheet they use to create their score bar chart.
Each topic is repeated 11 times to accommodate each possible score, 0-10. Then, the count data for each topic and score is tallied in the final column.
Start by opening the ChartExpo tool. The Score Bar Chart is found under General Analysis Charts. You can also search for it at the top.
Select the correct Sheet Name to begin inputting your data into the chart.
Next, you need to enter your count data by clicking on the Add new metric field. This is your Column C data.
For the Add new dimensions field, first enter your Topic data in Column A. This represents all of your survey topics.
Repeat this process, but this time select your ratings in Column B.
After you click Create Chart, your resulting visual should look like this:
When you understand how to read a score bar chart, there is a lot of potential value and insights to be gained. Here is a quick rundown of how to read this chart:
To understand how the score bar chart calculates the positive-negative significance, you have to know what’s considered a negative, positive or neutral score.
The overall score (the number inside the red or green square) is calculated by taking the total percentage of positive responses for the topic and subtracting the total percentage of negative reactions.
For the topic of “doctors,” 36% of scores were negative, while 45% were positive. The math is:
Another example, let’s take “services.” For this topic, 55% of responses were negative and only 14% were positive.
What can you learn from this score bar chart example?
With mostly negative scores shown in the score bar chart, it is a clear signal to the hospital that they need to correct some issues!
Another common way to receive feedback is in the form of 0-5 stars. This is the system that many popular sites use, including Amazon and Google. The rating bar chart offers a new way to display that data. Looking at your review ratings for this fresh angle can provide unique insights.
The spreadsheet for a rating bar chart is one of the easiest to make of all of the bar chart examples covered thus far. In the first column will be your 1-5 star ratings. Then, you’ll need a second column for the count data of each star rating.
That’s it; you’re done preparing the data for a rating bar chart!
The Rating Bar Chart is found in ChartExpo under the General Analysis Charts.
Enter the Sheet Name that contains your rating bar chart data.
In the Add new metric field, enter your count data in Column B.
For Add new dimension, input your Column A data; these are your 1-5 rating categories.
With your data entered, you can tap Create Chart and see your visualization results.
You’ve probably seen similar charts on Amazon and other review sites. Each bar represents a different star rating. The colors signal the negative or positive nature of each rating.
A rating bar chart offers an excellent overview of all of your review data. You can see your average star rating at the top.
Ideally, you want as few 1- and 2-star ratings as possible. When you have a majority of negative reviews, it’s a clear indication that you need to investigate further and discover what is making customers unhappy.
So what you are waiting for? Why not try the awesome ChartExpo library now and give your data a beautiful visualization.
To better understand what a bar chart is, it’s easiest to see a bar graph example and look at each part and feature that makes up this type of diagram.
The first thing to notice is the title. This tells you exactly what the data in the chart is showing. In this case, you’re looking at the “Number of Students Interested in School Subjects.” This could be useful for a school administrator or principal who wants to see what subjects are most interesting to students.
Next, you’ll look at the labels for each axis. In this vertical bar chart example, “Number of students” is the Y-axis, ranging from 0 to 260. “Lists of subjects” are expressed along the X-axis. This sets the stage for how the data is displayed and how you need to read it.
Finally, you can look at the actual subject categories displayed along the x-axis, as well as the size of their respective bars that represent how many students are interested in each class. The longer the bar, the more students are interested in that subject.
Here is another example:
Given the labels of each axis, what would you title this bar chart example?
There are many applications of a bar chart.
The bar chart examples pictured above show the most common use of this visualization type. The size of the bars makes it very easy to compare data across many different categories visually.
You can also use a bar graph to show changes over time. In this case, your categories (e.g., school subjects) reflect different points along the timeline, like months of the year, days of the week or years.
If you use stacked or clustered bars, you can add another dimension of data. For example, you could take the “Number of Students Interested in Each Subject” chart and divide each school subject into specific classes or teachers.
Instead of “Math,” you could have a stacked bar that shows data for algebra, calculus, geometry, etc. Stacked bar charts are sometimes referred to as “parts of the whole” chart.
Businesses can use stacked bar charts to compare costs versus returns to see how profitable certain categories are.
Again, the best time to use a bar chart is when you want to compare data across different categories.
Bar graphs are also useful whenever you are going to report your data findings to others. Since bar charts are so common and popular, most audiences are very familiar with how to read and understand this charting type.
Plus, they are far more convenient to read than a table of numbers! So, they should be used whenever you’re trying to present a spreadsheet of data, even a relatively simple one.
When selecting what type of chart to use to display your data, you always have to think about the diagram’s limitations. What could audiences potentially miss or misunderstand as a result of this chart?
The limitations of a bar chart are the limitations of all charting types. The chart can make data look compelling and important, but if the numbers behind the data are inaccurate or come from an unverified source, your entire chart is compromised.
You also have to consider the quantity of the data. If you don’t have a lot of data to work with, the conclusions you draw from the chart may not be as accurate. The bars may look significant in size compared to the rest, but they could only represent a small minority of the numbers.
For example, if you only looked at figures from the past three days, the data conclusions you reach will be extremely volatile compared to if you looked at numbers from the past year.
There many types of bar chart: Bar chart, Stacked bar chart, Grouped bar chart, Matrix chart, Progress chart, Pareto chart
Bar charts are used for comparing different metric values. Because you can see which group is higher against the other groups.
In presentations and reports, bar graphs are a very effective visual. They are popular because they help the reader to detect patterns or trends significantly more simply than looking at a table of numerical data.
Bar chart contain two types of variables: dependent variables, independent variables. The dependent variables may be discrete or continuous. But independent variable only contains discrete values.
The height is the dependent variable, which is plotted on the vertical or horizontal axis. Because we’re attempting to establish a link between two measures.
Charting and reporting your data is often the final stage in data analysis. It is a crucial step in the process, so you don’t want to let a lack of charting options handcuff you.
ChartExpo allows you to explore all of the bar graph examples discussed on this page, as well as many more PPC charts and general analysis visualizations.
With more charting options, you have several new ways to depict your data visually. View it from fresh angles and bring new insights to the surface with each unique bar chart example!
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