For a data story to move audiences to take action or embrace change, it should have the following components:
Well, if you don’t get it right on the first part, clear and easy to interpret visualizations, you’ll fail. Yes, there’s no shortcut to this.
The trend chart is one of the easy-to-interpret visualizations you can use to highlight key insights that support your topic (theme). This blog has different Trend Chart examples to enhance your understanding.
So keep reading.
Graphs that are simple and clear, such as Trend Charts, can make your data story really persuasive.
Remember, people don’t like being subjected to cognitive load. So transforming everything into a low-hanging fruit could go a long way in persuading your audience to take the action you want. Or the recommendations you’re putting forward to inspire change.
We’ve rounded up strategies and tips you can use to transform your data story into a very compelling narrative. And this includes how best you can deploy Trend Charts to your data narrative. These tips are tested and proven by thousands of data visualization experts across the world.
Trend chart shows the data over time where as sentiment trend chart shows the data over time with positivity or negativity of the data response as well. There is ChartExpo library, which contains multiple charts and sentiment trend chart is one of them. You can use this chart to show a trend of variables over time. Besides, this chart provides forecasts using past trends.
For example in the image below you can see there is product feedback in which customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction level is mentioned with respect to time. In the same chart trend and its sentiment can be analyzed very easily.
A trend chart on its own is less powerful. But when compared with other charts, such as Bar graphs, they provide deeper insights. For instance, the diagram above represents a Trend Chart incorporated into a Bar graph.
You can easily highlight trends and even forecast the future by simply extrapolating your trend curve based on past performance. The Trend Chart is also called the price action curve by hedge funds and forex brokers. A price action chart can be accessed on the Meta Trader 4 platform, an application used for online trading of currencies and commodities.
Essentially, most forex traders, including institutional hedge funds, use past price trends to forecast future prices of currencies and commodities, such as oil and gold. We’re talking about billions of dollars put on the line based on forecasting using the past movement of prices.
A trend can be positive (increasing) or negative (decreasing). As shown above, it can never be flat. It’s incredibly easy to highlight growth or lack thereof, especially when presenting a data narrative to an audience.
Now that you have a clue about Trend Charts: let’s head to the next section, which is about what to look for in these visualizations.
A Trend Chart that complements a data story should have the following attributes:
So why do Sentiment Trend Charts matter to you? This is what you’ll learn in the next section.
Graph is a visual representation of data, it can show you different analysis with different data. Not all charts can be used for every data, but there are some visualization which may be used for multiple purposes.
Sentiment analysis is special case, ChartExpo library have a special chart sentiment trend chart which can be used to represent both sentiment and non-sentiment data for trend. Later in this blog you will learn how can you can create such chart.
There are few benefits of the trend chart which should know.
It’s amazingly easy to interpret Sentiment Trend charts due to their simplicity and clarity.
These charts can empower your audience to understand the data, see interesting perspectives, and draw conclusions quickly. Remember, the backbone of any compelling message is its simplicity. So use simple visualizations to drive your audience to consume more of your story and, most importantly, act on your recommendations.
Sentiment Trend charts empower your audience to see with ease the emerging trends. This can compel them to embrace change or act on your recommendations swiftly.
Trend, shifts, and outliers make more sense when graphically represented. And this is because visuals make it easier for you to identify strongly correlated parameters.
Certain correlations, associations, and distribution patterns in your data may not be that obvious. You need charts like Sentiment Trend to help you uncover relationships you didn’t even know existed.
A Sentiment Trend chart is one of the revolutionary visualization charts you can use to create meaningful stories out of your data.
Storytelling is incredibly vital in persuasion and simplifying communication. You can bet on Sentiment Trend charts to help you communicate engagingly with both your clients and teams. Conveying a message in a story is much more engaging and easier to understand.
You’re more likely to remember images and stories than typical words and numbers.
Humans can process visual images much faster than text. Besides, a chart is easier for your brain to process than reading text and numbers in tables.
The Sentiment Trend Chart can dramatically improve the speed of decision-making processes of your audience. According to the Wharton School of Business, simplified data visualization can shorten business meetings by up to 24%.
Why?
Like we said earlier, for you to persuade people, you should strategically incorporate logos (logic), ethos (emotions), and pathos (personality). Charts, which are the bearers of insights, appeal to the logic part of our brains. Remember, we make decisions based on emotions and justify them with logic. So you have to give your audience data backed-insights for them to justify their actions.
Now that you’ve learned the benefits of Trend Charts let’s head to the next section. You’ll uncover where you can apply these charts to get the BEST out of your data.
There are many business domains where you can apply this chart:
Survey data storytelling uses data insights in visualizations to tell a story about people’s views, opinions, and sentiments regarding a brand.
You can use a Sentiment Trend Chart to tell a story about the trend of market sentiments.
It’s incredibly easy to know what’s going on by taking a quick look at the Trend Charts. For instance, in the diagram above, the general trend of positive sentiment is rising.
Video data storytelling is simply using the data of the metrics you’re tracking to tell a compelling story.
When you have a video on YouTube you want to know how much people interreacted with it. People response as likes or dislikes depicts how much they appreciate the video. If you look at the graph above you will get idea that over the period of time, likes increased. In month June, minimum dislikes came and in month August maximum like came.
So how can you create a compelling survey story? Highlight Key Insights!
Highlighting key insights allow your audience to cherry-pick insights with ease. And that’s what a compelling data story is all about.
Take a look at the diagram below:
For instance, in the Trend Chart above, the best performing months are August 2020, September 2020, and June 2021, as highlighted by the red boxes.
As data resources grow, more click-and-drag tools continue to spring up to help you understand your data effortlessly without consuming much time.
The solution is not to do away with your Google Sheets but rather to enhance it with an Add-on.
Remember, you need visual diagrams that communicate insights effortlessly for you to create a compelling data story.
There’s a simple and easy-to-use data visualization tool you can use to create clear and compelling data stories. This app makes charts that you can customize and download EASILY.
This easy-to-use and affordable Add-on is called ChartExpo.
ChartExpo is a highly affordable and easy-to-use Google Sheets Add-on that creates simple and easy-to-read visualizations for your data stories.
So if you’re looking for a data visualization tool to create easy-to-interpret charts that seamlessly complements your data story, check no further.
So how does ChartExpo help you to create persuasive data narratives?
This budget-friendly data visualization tool comes jam-packed with over 50 other chart templates just for YOU to select the BEST chart for your story.
And this includes Sentiment Trend Charts.
Besides, with ChartExpo, you have unlimited freedom to alter your charts to align with your data stories. So you don’t have to sweat over highlighting the key insights that support the main idea.
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.
Let’s create a scenario with survey data. Imagine you run an e-commerce store, and you want to establish the target market sentiments using data. So you’ve put together a short survey on the Thank You Page of your site to ask customers what they like and dislike with respect to:
Essentially, you want to use data to know how your converting customers perceive your brand. The key metric is the count of both likes and dislikes. The key goal of the exercise is to optimize your sales funnel to drive more conversions and reduce drop-offs.
Let’s use the data below for the scenario.
Topic | Positive | Negative |
Customer Service | 67 | 33 |
Shipping | 60 | 40 |
Price | 75 | 25 |
Selection | 85 | 15 |
Return Policy | 30 | 70 |
Ordering Process | 75 | 15 |
Communication | 90 | 10 |
Let’s start by exporting the data to Google Sheets. And then, unleash our ChartExpo Add-on, as shown below.
Check out the resulting Chart below.
Like we said earlier, you can use Sentiment Trend Charts to visualize your video data for storytelling.
Imagine you run a YouTube account for your brand. You’ve been using this channel to tell captivating stories about your offers. You want to use data to gauge the opinion of the target market for your brand.
The key metric you’ll use is the count of likes and dislikes. And the dimension is time.
Remember, the process of visualizing your data using ChartExpo Add-on is similar to survey storytelling.
Let’s use the data below for the scenario.
Videos | Likes | Dislikes |
March | 36405 | 17641 |
April | 36137 | 18853 |
May | 30712 | 18294 |
June | 33374 | 5412 |
July | 34059 | 15268 |
August | 39846 | 15689 |
Note: The process of visualizing the data above using ChartExpo is the SAME as survey storytelling. Let’s check out our resulting chart.
Sentiment Trend Chart in ChartExpo library can provide you different facilities to make your chart more attractive to represent data for different purposes. You can even change the colors of the chart to show the non-sentiment data which may not be representing red or green. Let’s take an example below to present such data.
A city wanted how many females and males have got dose of vaccine and they also wanted divide this age wise. So, it can be easy to find which age group and gender is not taken dose. When they find age group and gender, it will be easy for them find reason why those people are not vaccinated.
The city hall called all the vaccination center and ask them to provide data they needed for analysis. After 3 hours they got all the data they needed. One of them took data and tried to find trend in it.
Age Group | Male | Female |
18 to 24 | 1054 | 1111 |
25 to 29 | 1057 | 1641 |
30 to 34 | 1470 | 2526 |
35 to 39 | 1793 | 3549 |
40 to 44 | 2534 | 5470 |
45 to 49 | 4842 | 9587 |
50 to 54 | 8692 | 13514 |
55 to 59 | 13855 | 15088 |
60 to 64 | 19897 | 17718 |
65 to 69 | 30179 | 23745 |
70 to 74 | 31688 | 22873 |
75 to 79 | 28753 | 21490 |
80 to 84 | 21779 | 19052 |
85 to 89 | 13104 | 13662 |
90+ | 5645 | 8066 |
First, he pasted all the data in Google Sheet.
He decided to visualize this data. So, everyone can easily understand it.
This is a great non sentiment data based visualization which clearly highlights different age groups treated in the local hospital since it was started. Moreover this single chart segregated based on male and female patients.
A “trend” is an upwards or downwards shift in a data set over time. It allows you to predict what might happen to the data in the future.
There is a sentiment trend chart in ChartExpo Library which can help you to create sentiment and non-sentiment trend charts.
It’s no doubt that Sentiment Trend Charts are among the simplest and easiest-to-read charts you can use to make your data story more compelling. We hope after having trend chart examples you will have well understanding of this visualization.
Sign-up for ChartExpo today to create powerful data stories that empower your audience to take action using Trend Charts.
You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by trying ChartExpo add-on for Google Sheets.
We will help your ad reach the right person, at the right time
Related articles