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Data analysis is a part of every business now, understanding raw or table based organized data may require strenuous effort to understand the results but to quickly analyze and improving the decision making process can done by visualizations that really work to show the outcomes.
Everyone always thought my little brother wasn’t so good at math. Don’t blame me. His grades had a lot to do with it too. Recently, I had to babysit and help him with his homework. After a little protest from him, we got down to it. First, he needed to add two and two.
He kept staring into space while muttering inaudible things. I had to do something. Then, an idea came. I decided to illustrate for him using cookies.
I put two cookies on a plate. I got another plate and put two cookies on it. I then asked him to count them all. In the split of a second, he shouted four! I immediately became dazed as I wondered how he got it right even without counting.
Later, I found myself wondering how it was so simple when using cookies and almost impossible when it was written in his book. I then found that it was more relatable, fascinating, and understandable just by making it graphic.
Humans process visuals 60,000 times faster than they process text. Even for most people who are good at math, it is easier and more effective when you illustrate subjects using graphics.
Let us switch to digital marketing and business. After running an advertising campaign, you go in and pull out the data for the ad reach, clicks, and other advertising data. Looking at it, you almost cannot get anything from it. It is just numbers.
Sometimes, you just want to find out how many people are seeing your ad. Other times, you want to find out how much the keywords are costing you per click. Either way, the data is useless without proper analysis.
An effective analysis will give you the insights you need about your ad performance. It will also lead you to take the right action. That way, you can have better results in less time.
How can you effectively analyze your data to get desired results? The answer is as simple as how I got my brother to understand his math. Visualization in this case.
Data visualization is the graphical representation of data, by using visual elements like maps, graphs, and charts. Visualizations that work will give you access to see and understand trends, outliers, and patterns in your data.
This article will show you the best visualizations that work just for you and how to use them to analyze data more efficiently.
Shall we?
If you are still in doubt as to why visualizing your data makes your data speak much louder, this section will help.
First, you do not want to find yourself sitting for hours trying to analyze a group of abstract numbers. Then, sitting and not arriving at any conclusion that moves you forward. You get yourself stressed, you waste a lot of time that you could use to get more things done, and you do not get clear answers.
How is my convincing going? Not there yet? Let me give you something else then. Let us look at these two scenarios.
We have Greg. Greg owns a small-scale advertising agency. He recently got a job to run an ad for a referred client. After about 2 weeks of running the ad, he needed to see how well the ads were performing so he could optimize and get the best out of it. So, he got the data from the ads account and put them in a spreadsheet.
He then spent the next four days trying to compare the numbers and understand what they were saying. He also got bored since he was making extremely slow progress so he was binge eating a lot.
Greg finally tweaked the ad without clear insights as to what the ad needed. By that time, he already had a lot of backlog of work and was too stressed to be efficient at any.
Then, there is Sharon. Sharon was in the same shoes as Greg except that she was advertising for her product. Sharon could not take any chances and she had a lot of work to do. She pulled out her data and organized it in her Google spreadsheet. She then added a data visualization tool called ChartExpo to her spreadsheet.
She opened ChartExpo and inputted her data. She immediately got a stunning chart that showed her the exact keywords to mark as negative and how to better optimize her ad campaign.
Greg or Sharon? Sharon. What differentiates them is that Sharon knows what Greg does not. If Greg knew, Greg would be happier and more efficient.
You may have a team lead that you report to, or you run your ad agency, or it is just your own business. Here, you will learn what Sharon knew and will be as efficient as she was.
Now that you are fully convinced, let us see some basic requirements in getting visualizations that work.
When it gets down to analyzing data, knowing your priorities is important to analyze the data in the right way. Even before gathering data for analysis, your intentions for analyzing will guide you into selecting the right data to measure.
What happens when you do not gather the right data or select the right visual is that you do not achieve your desired result. This then translates to you losing time and being unproductive.
When visualizing data, you need to know the source of the data, why they were collected, and the quantity of data that would be needed for analysis.
All these will direct you to which visual or chart will best suit your data and make it give the exact answers that you are looking for.
As a digital marketer, data can be provided from a single ad campaign. However, the purpose of your analysis may drive you to collect data on CPC and keywords only. Another purpose may drive you to collect data on impressions per location.
Your data visual will greatly depend on your purpose for analysis. Therefore, you need to find out different types of data and how the different purposes that data is used for.
Each data visualization technique can be used in different ways. Here are five of the most common ways data visualization can be used.
This is the most common use of data visualization.
It is common because mostly, data is usually measured relative to time. The first step in a lot of data analysis is to watch out for the data trend over time.
Many times, performances in marketing are also measured relative to time. This is one major purpose of analyzing data. To measure changes in an entity, performance, or growth over some time.
Frequency is also a very common use of data visualization because it also involves time.
However, instead of measuring change or growth, it measures how often a particular event occurred. Measuring how sales improved over time in a business is different from measuring how many times an average client will order takeout food from the same restaurant in a week.
This is somewhat similar to changes over time, but in this case, a little bit of survey is required.
Identifying correlations is extremely valuable in the use of data visualization. However, it could be extremely difficult and quite tasking to determine the relationship between two variables without a visualization.
Let us take a look at how Lucy was able to provide a good data visualization correlation concerning her sales for March. Lucy works at a local store that recently started offering chocolates to clients.
She had to draft a report on how the sales of chocolate went for March to show her boss. At the store, there were different varieties of chocolate. She especially concentrated her analysis on Snickers, Bounty, Oreos, KitKat, and Mars.
Lucy wrote out her report after collecting her data. Now, she wanted to input a data visualization to make an impression on her boss.
She thought of two options for her chart. She thought of using either a pie chart or a bar chart for her analysis. The chart was supposed to help her show the relationship between the store customers and the different varieties of chocolate.
She finally used a pie chart, explained the relationship to her boss, and increased her chance of becoming the employee of the month. Through that, her boss also found out that she was good with details and elevated her to a supervisory level.
An example of examining a network with data visualization can be seen in market research.
Marketing professionals need to know which audience to target with their message. This helps them to identify where their target audience is gathered, their spread, and how to immediately make the message trend amidst the targeted audience.
This step in visualizing data will help most organizations and individual marketers in finding the right audience and how to satisfy them.
Data visualizations can also be used in scheduling and planning. To allocate time to the completion of a complex project, things can get confusing and exhausting.
However, with the use of a chart or graph, you can easily draw up the dates and time for working on such projects. This immediately solves that issue by clearly illustrating each task within the project and defining how long it will take to complete it.
After seeing some of the ways that data visualizations can be used, you need to understand how to pick the right visual that would work for your data’s purpose.
One major issue you might be having when selecting the right data visualization is knowing which chart and graph to use for different types of data. There are countless graphs and charts to use when converting raw data into a visual format.
It may be difficult to decide which type of visual to use. However, to know the right chart or graph to use, you need to do the following.
Identifying your audience is the first step in creating an effective data visualization strategy. The kind of people your audience consists of is what will determine the type of chart and data visualization to use.
Your audience may consist of experienced, executive-level marketers. This means that there are higher chances that they have already been exposed to hundreds of bar charts, graphs, and other types of visuals.
When you have less experienced audiences who are not familiar with data analysis, it is best to use a Bar chart, a Pie graph, a Single row stack chart, a Column chart, or a Dual-axis Grouped bar chart.
If you are preparing a report for an experienced industry client, you could then use either the Map and Bar chart, the Sankey chart, the Dual-axis Radar chart, the stacked area graph, or the Components trend chart.
Colors help you highlight the most important aspects of your messages. Colors are very important in selecting data visuals as they can easily simplify complex data and make powerful first impressions of your brand.
Over time, marketers have understood that there is a clear link between colors and conversions when it comes to establishing a brand’s identity. However, it is important to know that how you use the colors in data presentation also leaves a lasting impression on your customers.
Therefore when visualizing data it is important to keep brand color schemes and aesthetic patterns in check. By using your brand colors in visualizing data, your clients can retain both the information and your brand identity.
Also for sentiment analysis colors play a good role, green automatically represents positive and red represents negative.
We have talked about all the important things to know and do when visualizing data. It is also important for you to know what to avoid when using data visualization tools.
As a first-time user of advanced data visualization tools, these are mistakes that you will mostly make early on when familiarizing yourself with the technique.
However, this section will help you to identify them and eventually avoid them. The data visualization tool is simple and easy to use. Most data visualization tools are intuitive.
However, there are mistakes to avoid as a user of these tools. This increases your efficiency and productivity.
As a user, you determine the form of visualization to be used and the properties of the data. To eliminate these cons in your data visualization, here’s what you should avoid.
Finding the right graph, map, or chart to use may take time to achieve. However, using the wrong visualization format can make you lose your audience.
Therefore, you must select the right chart to visualize your data. To select your chart, you need to identify the purpose of your analysis, identify your audience, and identify the metrics. This will guide you into making the right choice of chart for your visualization.
This is very similar to using the wrong visualization format. When you do not work with the right data, you definitely would be using the wrong visualization format. This will in turn end up giving you the wrong result.
This can also thwart the purpose of the message that you want to communicate to your audience. It can also lead them to draw inaccurate conclusions. You should select the right data for each visual.
The tool is what will determine the result of your report. Choosing the right tool will make things easier for the user.
Using the wrong tool can make your work clumsy and leave you confused. It could also leave a bad rating on your business and boss. Choosing the right is one of the major steps forward in the right direction.
In the next section, I will teach you how to select the right data visualization tool.
There is a whole variety of data visualization tools to use. However, there are basic questions to ask before selecting any visualization tool.
One of the first questions to ask when selecting a tool is the ‘who’ question. That is, who the user of the tool is. You may be here for yourself or your team. However, this question goes a little beyond that.
Some tools are designed for beginners, some are designed for everyone and some for experts. The stage where you are will help you in deciding which tool will be best for you.
Another important question that you will need to ask yourself is the ‘purpose’ question. What do you need to make out of your analysis? Do you need reports or research?
The nature of the data you are working on should also determine your choice of a visualization tool. Visualization can be used for reporting and research. Therefore, you should choose a tool that is best for what you have in mind.
Here are some characteristics of great tools.
Now, let us get down to the practical use of visualization.
In Google Sheets, there are embedded tools for visualizing data. Google Sheets can be used to generate tables, charts, and even maps. Google Sheets will help you organize your data and get it ready for visualization.
However, it is not the best tool for 21st-century digital marketers and entrepreneurs. Google Sheets have their limitations in visualizing and cannot be used to meet the current demands of data analysis.
One major advantage of Google Sheets is that you can create and edit your data on your browser without having to download and install the software.
An advanced data visualization tool to give your required result on Google Sheets is ChartExpo. ChartExpo helps you to create all forms of charts that you need within clicks on Google Sheets.
Jack is a PPC marketer who knows how important it is to optimize his campaigns to get the desired outcome. He also knows that keywords are the pillar of any PPC campaign.
Jack did not want to come up with a bulky report, and he needed to know which keywords were performing optimally well and which ones were not.
He got his data out from his Google Ads account and put it into his Google Sheets.
From this spreadsheet data, you definitely cannot understand how those keywords are performing.
Jack then started by clicking ChartExpo from the add-ons.
Jack clicked ChartExpo, and the add-on came up on the right side of his screen.
He then clicked on ‘Create a Chart’ and saw a list of different charts.
He selected the Stacked Grid Chart from PPC Charts.
After he clicked on the Stacked Grid Chart, he selected his sheet, dimensions, and metrics.
Then he clicked on the ‘Create Chart’ button.
This was the Chart he got on his screen.
From the Chart, Jack could easily understand and see which of his keywords was performing well and which was not.
This understanding helped Jack save time and know which keyword to remove, pause or keep.
This is simply how to use ChartExpo on Google Sheets.
Now, we will see how to use ChartExpo on Microsoft Excel.
Just like Google Sheets, Excel is also a data worksheet that has embedded visualization tools. However, they also have limitations.
And to provide you with the answers you need, ChartExpo is an advanced visualization tool that can meet the present-day demands of data analysis.
Let us see how Sarah used ChartExpo to analyze data in an Excel spreadsheet.
After she logged in, she clicked on ‘Create Chart’.
Sarah wanted to know how popular her software was among her audience. To analyze the type of data she was working on, she chose to use the Likert Chart.
Sarah clicked on ‘survey’ charts.
Then, she selected the ‘Likert Chart’.
After she clicked on the chart, a sample chart came up.
Next, she clicked on Explore Chart data and switched the sample data with her data.
After Sarah added the data in Excel, she clicked ‘create chart from sheet data’.
Her chart looked like this.
From the chart, Sarah was able to know how satisfied her customers were with her software.
It is that simple.
When you create images to show some facts by using different colors, drawings, lines etc. to represent the data is called visualization.
Imaginations have no boundaries. Through visualization you create images in the mind about the facts and numbers. If visualization is used properly with proper color combinations you can easily build the story behind data and can get the idea at first glance what it would be talking about.
The importance of data visualization cannot be overemphasized and Visualizations that really work cannot be found without any tool or library.
For Jack, Sarah, you, and me, data visualization is the way to make our data speak louder and come alive. By using data visuals, your work becomes organized, beautiful, and attractive for your audience and customers to enjoy.
From knowing the purpose of analyzing your data, understanding your audience, and knowing the pitfalls to avoid when creating your data visuals, everything you need is now available.
After organizing your data in a worksheet such as Excel or Google Sheets, visualizing with ChartExpo helps you to go above the limitations of basic tools and gets you the desired outcome.
This article has shown you the step-by-step way on how to use ChartExpo in both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel within clicks.
This is everything you need to make data visualization fun and easy for you, and at the same time, you can impress your audience.
All you need to do is to give it a shot.
It’s going to be awesome!
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