Let’s face it. Data without visualization is pretty voiceless.
And this means you cannot extract actionable insights to fuel growth and overcome other business-related problems.
Well, there are creative ways to display data this 2023. Yes, you read that right. You can create a visual that complements your story to get an instant buy-in.
It gets better. Seasoned data visualization pros follow these ways religiously, especially when crafting data stories for their audiences.
This blog will walk you through creative ways to visualize your data and get the most out of it. Besides, you’ll come across practical ways to tell a compelling data story using creative visuals.
You don’t want to miss the rest of the blog if you intend to improve your data storytelling by using awesome visualization library.
So why use creative Data visualization for storytelling?
Like we said earlier, data without visualization is pretty voiceless. Besides, it’s unlikely to help boost growth or engagement with customers.
Remember, a massive chunk of your data is always noise.
For your data to speak and provide actionable answers, it needs to be visualized. And it’s really time-consuming to try to pick interesting patterns and trends on spreadsheets. You may end up spending hours, if not days, just to know the ‘what’ in long tables.
We visualize data to pick patterns and trends that stand out from the data.
Visualizing data lightens and simplifies communication of insights, which are more preferred by the audiences. In today’s world, we generate an immense amount of data. This data grows minute by minute. So how can you make sense of what’s going on quickly and easy?
Yes, you got it right. You need creative charts to separate signals from noise. Creative ways to display data, such as charts, make it easy to compile an insight-backed story for the audience.
For example, showing data in the form of table may clutter your mind but showing in a creative same data may give you idea at first look.
Visualization Source: ChartExpo
Take advantage of the fact that we process images faster than text and numbers. And make your story irresistible and persuasive to the intended audiences using creative data visualization.
Let’s agree on this! Visualization is a more creative and persuasive way of presenting raw data in spreadsheets to audiences (or readers). Keep your audience on edge and invite a quick buy-in of your data story with creative visuals.
Surveys are mostly conducted to understand the customer feedback but if the same data is presented in a novel and creative way that could leave well impact on stake holders.
Visualization Source: ChartExpo
Did you know visualization can dramatically improve data collection as well?
The more you visualize and get actionable insights, the more you’re likely to demand quality data. Gathering data on consumer behavior, which is the lifeblood of today’s businesses, provides an opportunity for personalization. For instance, data empowers you to personalize marketing messages to resonate with the emotional needs of the target market.
Providing what your audience wants is the critical link missing in your profit strategy.
Use stories to help the audience understand data. And then, add creative visualizations to communicate your key findings effectively.
So how can you make a data story compelling to your audiences?
Use the tips below to get started.
To craft a compelling data story, you need an actual story.
It sounds contradictory. Yes, we know.
To create a narrative, start by asking a question or forming a hypothesis. And then, dig into your data to find answers.
Below are some of the questions you need to ask while wireframing the story.
Interestingly, the story you set out to tell may not end up being the story you find. What if the insights from charts disprove your hypothesis?
Remember, visualization comes before you create a data story.
Lastly, as you gather all the story ingredients, don’t forget to develop a relevant theme and outline for guidance. You don’t want to deviate from your goal, remember?
What relationships exist in your data points?
Are there relationships that stand out from the rest?
Note: These relationships can provide an interesting angle to your story.
A trend of a data point, such as sales, can either move upwards or downwards.
Imagine you’re tracking the growth or decline of a product.
What would you look for in a creative data visualization displaying this data?
Yes, you’re right. You would look for an uptrend or downtrend. Essentially, a downtrend depicts decline, while an uptrend represents growth. So identifying new or evolving trends in your data is crucial. And this is because they empower you to be proactive rather than reactive, especially to risks.
Take a quick look at the chart below.
Visualization Source: ChartExpo
Note how easy it is to spot the trend of customer sentiments towards different aspects of an e-commerce site, such as:
There’s a fascinating insight from the chart. A massive chunk of the customers is satisfied with other aspects of the business besides return policy.
It’s amazingly easy to spot insights and draw conclusions from the chart. Imagine staring at the survey data just to gain this insight. Yes, we know. It’s time-consuming and mentally draining.
Comparison analysis uncovers interesting correlations. Essentially, you can easily understand how your data points relate to one another and why.
Imagine you want to compare open rates for two different email subject lines to identify the winning one. Basically, you want the target market to decide.
This is where comparison analysis comes in.
The winning email subject line for the campaign becomes the new control.
Take a look at the creative data visualization (chart) below.
Visualization Source: ChartExpo
What can you see?
Exactly, it’s a graph visualizing survey data of a restaurant across three financial years.
Note how it’s incredibly easy to compare the years: 2018, 2019, and 2020.
For instance, the restaurant brand’s ease of ordering and cleanliness satisfy the customers the most. More so, the payment method received the lowest rating in 2020 compared to 2019 and 2018.
So what are outliers/anomalies?
An outlier/anomaly is a variable, trend, or pattern that’s out of the norm. For instance, you run a PPC campaign with an average cost per click (CPC) of $2. But, this week, it’s averaging $50. In this scenario, $50 is an outlier CPC.
Sometimes outliers are good and sometimes they are bad which can leave negative effective. It is up to your data and analysis how are you looking at it and how that data would affect the business.
Now let’s take another example of keyword search volume and its cost per click. You can see in the below image as outlier with the least cost per highest search volume is highlighted with red color.
Visualization Source: ChartExpo
Remember, outliers are useful to you as well. Investigate further to know why it happened and its significance to your objectives.
As you’re looking for outliers, ask the following questions:
Why is your data behaving abnormally?
What’s the cause?
You’ll be surprised by the results if you investigate further. And this is because you may uncover crucial insights.
Visualization Source: ChartExpo
A compelling story needs creative data visualization to inspire imagination.
Charts are powerful, especially in engaging your audience and increasing their attention span. Like we said earlier, storytelling is the creative way of seeking active attention from your audience. Just like a gun requires ammo to be powerful, you need charts to make your story irresistible and persuasive for quick buy-in.
Storytelling with data visualization helps you simplify the information, highlight the most important data, and communicate key points quickly.
Like we promised at the start of the blog, below are more creative ways to display data.
Remember to select a simple and easy chart to interpret for your audience if you want active participation.
Spreadsheets are a great tool to collect and analyze tad bit amounts of data. However, as your business grows and produces tons of data, the tool starts to show cracks.
And this can hurt your business badly.
You need data, irrespective of its size, to make meaningful and unbiased decisions. Let’s agree on this. Spreadsheet tools, such as Google Sheets, can only take you so far.
Conversely, a massive chunk of visualization tools requires scripting and coding. This implies if you don’t have that skill, you’ll have to spend more to acquire talent or acquire the skill.
Keep reading because, in a moment, we’ll tell you the best tool to show your data to the audience creatively.
You deserve the peace of mind. Besides, in today’s world, wasting your valuable time is not an option. We recommend a data visualization tool called ChartExpo.
Why?
ChartExpo is an easy-to-use and highly affordable tool that comes loaded with immersive dashboards to ensure your business never misses insights from its data.
Besides, using ChartExpo does not require you to be skilled in programming or coding. You only need a few mouse clicks to get a creative chart that’s easy to read and understand.
With ChartExpo, you’ll be putting your business into the road map towards being entirely data-driven.
Like we promised at the start of the blog, you get to learn how to put these ideas into practical use in this section.
Take a look at the example below:
Imagine you want to compare the level of community service and volunteer programs with regard to:
Essentially, you want to gauge how the level of community service differs with age sets and countries. Let’s use the data table below for our scenario.
| Country | 0 – 14 years | 15 – 64 years | 64 years and older |
| United Kingdom | 5 | 20 | 6 |
| Germany | 6 | 29 | 7 |
| Mexico | 17 | 31 | 5 |
| United States | 9 | 44 | 10 |
| Russia | 13 | 49 | 5 |
| Brazil | 26 | 55 | 3 |
| Japan | 29 | 91 | 15 |
So, where do you start?
Remember, we’ll be selecting one of the 12 creative ways to display data.
You can install the ChartExpo Add-on in Google Sheets then you will be able to use it in your application to analyze data.
Start by pasting the data in your Google Sheets. And then, power up ChartExpo using the easy steps below.
Note how it’s easy to get insights from this chart. It’s all about comparing the size of bars (individual bars).
Japan has the highest number of community service volunteer programs, while the United Kingdom has the lowest.
Besides, the age bracket (15-64 years) is the most active in community service compared to the other two. More so, this age bracket stands out in all the 7 countries.
Now let’s suppose you are a real Estate business and running a campaign, knowing the CPC and CTR of your search queries are important for the success of your campaign and adjacent bar chart is the best way to analyze this data. For example you have got the following data for your different search queries.
| Topic | Count | Count 1 |
| home | 55.52 | 1.09 |
| houses for sale | 39.72 | 1.3 |
| houses for rent | 23.05 | 1.32 |
| property for sale | 17.08 | 1.96 |
| homes for rent | 37.2 | 2.51 |
| for sale by owner | 5.64 | 2.64 |
| apartments for rent near me | 3.25 | 2.84 |
| real estate agent | 9.15 | 4.59 |
| homes for sale near me | 4.63 | 5.17 |
| rent house | 2.16 | 7.95 |
To get start with ChartExpo, select the ChartExpo from add-in.
When you click on the ChartExpo add-on will loaded in the right corner of your screen. Click create chart.
After click on the create chart, there are different type of chart that you can see. Select the Adjacent Bar chart from Comparative Analysis Charts.
After click on the Adjacent Bar chart select your dimension and metrics and then click on the create chart button.
After click on the create chart you will be able to see your chart on your screen.
From this chart you can easily check the CTR and CPC of your search queries. The left part of the chart is explaining your CTR and right part of the chart is your CPC. The chart is beautifully plotted and the colors in the chart will easily help your audience to know the story behind your data.
So what are the direct benefits of using creative charts?
Creative charts provide you with a quick and effective way to communicate insights within your spreadsheets.
So how can you benefit?
Different visualization have different creativity to tell a story.
The above visualization is showing how data is distributed around to represent the months of a year and distribution of different ice-cream flavors order in different months.
Visualization is only helpful to your business if it’s done right. We define right when the data visualization has served its purpose. Picture this: you have a data story and an audience to persuade or inform. How do you know your creative charts are easy to read and understand?
Yes, you got it right. If you start receiving questions related to your chart and data story, you know you’re on the right path.
This is a sign of engagement level.
Design visualizations that put the audience (and readers) to interpret and make decisions based on what they observe.
Without wasting time, let’s delve into specific benefits.
When you visualize a goal-driven process, you get empowered.
How?
As soon as you notice changes in variables, you gain full confidence and understanding of what’s going on and the best way to respond.
Besides, when you start seeing significant improvements, as a result of leveraging data, you gain self-belief in the process. The main positive effect of this is it shifts the sense of power away from outside control and breeds motivation.
Essentially, the unknowns are shifted towards your control with data visualization.
Data visualization helps you crunch those numbers in spreadsheets for actionable answers. Yes, and answers provide the basis for decision-making.
Essentially, you can easily weed out what’s not working to boost profits and take productivity to a higher level.
When you use creative ways to display data, such as charts in your data story, you’ll get quick action in the form of buy-in or support from the audience.
Remember, we grasp visuals more quickly than table reports and spreadsheets. So you need simple and easy-to-read charts if the response you expect from the audience is quick action.
Within business settings, visualization promotes a quick and fast decision-making process for growth.
Like we said earlier, data is gold in today’s world. And this implies that tons of data present immense opportunities for businesses to tap into for answers.
The patterns and trends you uncover from the data are insights. Exploring these patterns can help you focus on specific areas of your business that require urgent attention. For instance, the areas that result in either profits or losses need urgent attention.
Errors in this situation represent things that are barely working for you or your company.
Visualizing your data helps quickly identify what you and your team are doing wrong. Essentially, you’ll be saved from basing your decisions on intuition (and guesswork) when solving problems.
The reason why we visualize data is for storytelling purposes. Yes, we need stories to make sense of the insights of the data and their practical application.
So it pays, in fact, very well if you design your chart with the target audience in mind.
Following are few creative ways to adopt visualizations to display data. And they include the following:
Graphs, charts, and tables speak more volumes than text and numbers. Besides, we process images much faster than numbers.
Use creative ways to display data (charts) to create persuasive and irresistible data stories with easy-to-read charts. Remember, the most effective way of displaying data should promote data-driven decision-making as well.
1) Ensure your data is visible.
2) Focus most on the points your data illustrates.
3) Share only one key takeaway on each chart.
4) Label chart components clearly.
5) Visually highlight zones.
6) Write a chart title that reinforces the key insights.
Like we said earlier, data without a chart is pretty voiceless.
If you want to make your data story compelling and persuasive, then explore creative ways to display data. Luckily, we’ve rounded up few creative data visualizations for you (please refer back to the blog).
Why? We know data is only useful when it provides actionable insights to fuel growth and revenue in businesses.
This blog has tons of creative examples and tips you can leverage to transform your raw data into actionable answers for the decision-making process. We recommend ChartExpo Add-on in Google Sheets because it comes with a plethora of creative and interactive charts that are easy to read and interpret.
With ChartExpo, you have unlimited access to over 80 creative chart templates to ensure you’ve got everything you need to create that irresistible data story. Sign up today to create data stories that attract instant buy-in from the audience.
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