How to Make a Comparison Chart in Google Sheets?

“What is this?”

“Karen, can you get to the point?”

That’s what my friend’s boss told her last Friday.

She was asked to compare the previous and current costs and revenue of the company for two quarters.

So she painstakingly gathered the data, organized, and analyzed it.

It was tough for her. It took what felt like years trying to get the job done.

She presented the result to the team lead with the Google Sheets.

She was shocked when she got the response.

“What is this?”

She was confused.

Then, she gets another question that feels like she would need more years to figure it out.

Karen came out for lunch on Saturday and dumped the whole story on me.

What?

I had to laugh.

Well, not in an insensitive way.

But it was funny.

My laughter made her laugh about it too and that was good for her.

Her team lead wasn’t a bad person.

He probably just had other things on his mind and wasn’t absorbing a bit of what Karen was saying.

However, now she was tasked with repeating the job.

Not quite.

I told her.

Just one more step forward.

She needed to move her team lead from bored and distracted to interested and excited.

The only way she could make that happen was by converting the whole story into engaging images.

This was going to keep her boss’s attention and convey her message.

It was also going to keep her boss from asking questions based on confusion.

After doing what I told her, she came back literally beaming.

Karen’s boss was now reasoning with her, asking curious questions, and looking at improvement strategies.

Another round of laughs.

Now, you may easily relate to Karen’s situation.

Or maybe the data comparison is just for you so that you don’t spend years figuring the story out.

To help you with this, I will explain exactly what I told Karen that afternoon.

But before I do that, let’s get a few things straight.

They are data visualization, comparison charts, and why in the world they are so important. Let’s dive in.

Data Visualization in a Nutshell

Some research has proven that we are exposed to 5x more information today than we were in 3 decades before.

Now, I know human brains are better than supercomputers and all.

But let’s face it.

It gets increasingly difficult to concentrate in this data bombarded world.

Especially in the world of digital marketing.

You are daily surrounded by a huge amount of data to be absorbed, analyzed, processed, and reproduced.

Getting these things done often requires a lot of time and energy.

Plus, just those lonesome data entries can be quite difficult to understand.

However, another research points to a way out of all the stress.

The research proves that the human brain can process an image in just 13 milliseconds.

13 milliseconds!

So, imagine converting so much of that stressful data into an image.

This means that more than 100 data points can be understood by your brain in less than an instant.

This, compared to the time spent manually analyzing data and trying to understand the insight it gives is tremendous.

This just shows the innate power of visuals when it comes to data representation and actionable insights.

And that is what data visualization is about.

To give it a slightly academic definition, data visualization is the process of converting datasets into graphic images.

These graphic images then go on to reveal the central point and information the data gives.

Images tell the story in ways that make it easier to understand.

Therefore, the best 21st century way to analyze data is through pictures.

But as awesome as data visualization is, some visuals still get the “what is this?” question.

Why?

That is what we are going to discuss next.

The Making of Great Data Visuals

Making data into graphic images is a lot like art.

A lot goes into it to bring out the desired result.

From a selection of the right visualization type to color selection, to the final result.

When representing data in graphic form, there are different types of representation that can be used.

Types of data visuals include charts, maps, tables, graphs, and info     graphics.

For your visual to have the desired effect, the right type of visual must be selected.

Another important part of the data visualization process is the selection of colors.

The type of colors you use has a large effect on the message of your visual.

The elements of the visual have to convey      the correct message and remove any noise from the data.

When selecting colors, you should avoid being too plain and boring.

On the flip side, your visual should not be all fun and no message.

Another important thing in data visualization is the visualization tool itself.

After organizing your data in a Google Sheets form, you are left with visualizing it.

To do this, you need software used in achieving engaging visuals.

In the Google Sheets interface, there are embedded tools to produce charts and tables.

While these tools can create visuals, they often cannot be used to visualize complex and large datasets.

Therefore, a more advanced tool is needed for more complex and huge datasets.

A suitable tool for engaging data visualizations is the ChartExpo™ for Google Sheets.

ChartExpo™ has over 50 visualization options to help tell your data story quickly and with elegance.

In this piece, we will see how to use ChartExpo™ to draw comparison charts in Google Sheets.

However, to help you fully understand the concept, we should check out comparison charts.

What are Comparison Charts?

Remember Karen had to compare the cost and revenue of the company for two quarters?

That is what comparison charts do.

Comparison charts highlight the differences, similarities, and relationships between two or more quantities based on certain metrics.

Like in Karen’s case, she was drawing up differences and similarities between the previous quarter and the current quarter.

She used company costs and company revenue as metrics.

From this type of comparison, she was able to pick out the quarter that performed better overall.

She was also able to find visible trends in some of the months of both quarters.

With comparison charts, you can separate the qualities of the items and find which one stands out.

This is most relatable in areas when customers are getting choice paralysis over two or more product options.

Instead of reading through pages of features before getting to make a choice, a simple comparison info-graphic visual would speed up the process.

It would also reduce the tendency for the customer to give the flight response.

That is, the customer purchases nothing due to overt confusion.

There are Different Types of Traditional Comparison Charts.

They include bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, and tables.

These different types of comparison charts are well suited for various data forms.

For example, bar charts show strong comparisons between items.

Line graphs are mostly used to depict trends.

However, they can be used when searching for trends in 2 or more quantities based on time.

Pie charts are used in reflecting compositions of different parts of a whole.

They compare the presence of a metric in different locations.

Tables show a direct comparison between items.

They are mostly used in info-graphic visuals.

The type of comparison chart to use is dependent on your purpose or goal.

Common aims of comparison charts include:

1. To rank data items from high to low and vice versa.
2. To find out what items possess relevant and desirable values
3. To visually compare two or more entities to grasp their difference.
4. To recognize patterns shown by two or more quantities or periods.

Insights gained from comparison charts help businesses and individuals to immediately take action.

The instant action often has positive effects on future results.

Now that you understand the concept of comparison charts, let’s get started with ChartExpo.

The tool that turns your raw data into visual wonders.

Shall we?

Getting Started with ChartExpo™ for Google Sheets.

I said ChartExpo turns your raw data into visual wonders.

That is a little bit of an understatement.

With ChartExpo, you practically throw the data at the software and it comes back to you as what simply wows both your team and your clients.

I have said enough.

How then can you get Started?

The following steps would do the trick.

• Open your Google Sheets.
• From the toolbar at the top of the sheet, click ‘Add-ons’.
• If you already have ChartExpo installed on your device, you would see it available.

If you have not, visit the Google Workplace Marketplace to download the plugin.

• Once you have ChartExpo installed, select it from the ‘Add-ons’.

Once you do that, the tool will be loaded on the right side of your spreadsheet.

• After this, you are set to start making use of ChartExpo for your data visuals.

You can see and access the different types of charts available in the tool.

You can also test different charts to see how each suits your dataset.

Now that you’re all good, let’s see a vivid example of how ChartExpo was used to visualize PPC campaign data.

Practical Example of Data Visualization with ChartExpo

Tim has been running a PPC ad for his client.

His client has a business in the sales of mobile phones.

It was the second month and he wanted to give his client a report on how the ad has been faring.

After pulling out the ad data from the client’s Google Ads account, He organized it in his Google Sheets.

He wanted to measure the improvement in the clickthrough rate of the ad over 2 months and was using the keywords as a dimension.

This is what his raw data looked like.

I am certain that you can barely pick the purpose of this data at first glance.

You can’t also decipher the data story.

All you can probably see is a table with different parameters without any real meaning.

From this spreadsheet, it is difficult to understand if the clickthrough rate has increased for the ad or not.

Also, this does not openly express the overall Google campaign health and hidden trends in the data.

So back to Tim.

After loading his spreadsheet with the data, he proceeded to add ChartExpo™ to his Google Sheets interface.

After this, he went on to select the type of chart he wanted to use for his visualization.

In ChartExpo™, there are various types of comparison charts that can be used for datasets like this.

Tim chose to use the ‘change projection chart’.

The change projection chart is used to project either the positive or the negative difference between the facts of a category.

It helps to see the change between the same items at two different time points.

To open the chart, Tim clicked on ‘Create chart’ from his ChartExpo™ add-on.

He then clicked on ‘PPC Charts’

From the drop-down options, he then selected ‘Change projection chart’.

He then selected his Google Sheets and launched ChartExpo.

Then, he put ‘Count’ as his metric and added ‘Keywords’ and ‘Comparison’ as dimensions.

He then clicked on ‘Create chart’.

This was his result.

Tim immediately knew the result of his visual analysis.

However, he wanted to give his chart a name.

He clicked on the ‘Edit chart’ button below the chart.

Then from the chart header, he typed a name into the header box and clicked ‘Apply’.

Then he clicked on the ‘save’ button and this was his final chart.

The Insight this Chart Gives

From Tim’s chart, we can easily understand the entire ad journey from the previous month till the present.

The chart on the right-hand side simply shows the different clickthrough rates per keyword for both months.

The chart on the left side shows the difference between the clickthrough rates of both months.

Like in the case of keyword ‘mobile’

The chart on the right shows CTR for that keyword in two months.

It shows that it had a 20% CTR in the previous month and a 90% CTR in the current month.

Then on the left hand, it shows the increase from the previous to the current month which is 70%.

On the other hand, we can see that the CTR for the keyword ‘smartphone’ dropped by 80%.

From this, Tim and his client can begin to discuss methods to improve the clickthrough rates and eventually the conversions from the ad.

Wrap up

The importance of data visualization cannot be over-emphasized.

For Karen, Tim, me, you, business people, and marketers all over the world.

It reduces your stress levels, gives you more time, and gets you exponentially better results.

And for most of us, the data to be analyzed is truly just for comparison.

Between items, periods in time, products, countries, companies, services, and so much more.

In Google Sheets, we can organize data and visualize it.

However, with the complex and huge data that we have to deal with each day, the solution is to use a visualization tool.

For many PPC marketers, ChartExpo™ for Google Sheets has proven to be excellent for visuals.

And this piece has shown you the step-by-step way to draw awesome visuals for data using ChartExpo.

It has also shown you how to pick your visualization types and the things that matter in data visualization.

It’s everything you need to make data analysis a fun part of your life.

What can stop you now?

All you need to do is to ‘get cracking’!