All About Charts and Why You Need Them in Your Data Visualization

People understand and process information differently, such as through visuals. Many businesses use data visualization to share knowledge and help people understand data points. They’ll usually incorporate charts into the process, so you may wonder why they do so.

As you know charts and how they improve data visualization, you can incorporate them into your business or life. You can choose whichever charts work best for your situation and show off the data.

Why Charts Matter

If you plan to improve data visualization in your business or other concerns, you must understand why charts matter. In addition, they offer some key benefits to improve your data visualization, so go through them and see how they’ll assist your business.

Comparing Information

People want an easy way to reach different information. If they can see it side-by-side, they’ll understand how the parts perform and work with each other. 

Some people don’t realize how data relates to each other, so having them close together will make it easier to compare. From there, the people who must see the information can look at the pieces and determine the best course of action.

For example, if you show demographics through a graph, you can see what types of people purchase your products. For instance, if people in their 20s make most of the purchases, you’ll want to adjust your marketing to appeal to that demographic.

Simplifying Data

People have difficulty going through data, especially if they find it in its original format. They may see a bunch of words and data samples, but they don’t know how to read or understand them. However, if you incorporate the information into a chart, you’ll simplify the data.

While you could throw the data on a chart, you should pick common words and points so that anyone can understand them. Remember that you must minimize miscommunication to avoid problems, so use charts to make things easy to understand.

Simplifying data also involves combining points when necessary. For example, if you’re going to show how different clothing types perform, you’ll want to compare male, female, and child shirts into one category while putting all the shoes in another.

Removing the Excess

If you want someone to understand what you show them, you must remove anything unnecessary from the equation. For example, if you ramble on or talk about information that doesn’t apply to them or matter, you’ll lose their attention.

Doing so requires you to remove the clutter from the data. Charts are easy since you can organize them from most important to minor information. For example, if you want to show what products sell the best, you can put them near the top to make reading easier.

You can also remove any products that sell so little that they don’t matter during a significant business decision. That way, the group can focus on the points that make a difference and create an action plan.

The Types of Charts

Now that you understand why your data visualization needs charts, you’ll question the best types available. After all, if people can’t understand the charts, they can’t process the information, so look into the most effective types available.

Pie Charts

You can’t go wrong with pie charts if you want to use one of the most common, simple, and practical types. Pie charts get their name because they look like a pie. They have a perfect circle that you split into pieces to show off data, usually in percentages.

For example, if something takes up half of the pie, people realize the point plays a significant role in the data. In addition, the setup makes it easy to tell the pieces apart since the approach easily splits the information by color and lines.

As long as you have a guide along the side to explain each color, you’ll make it simple. You can use percentages or numbers based on the data, so people can easily compare them.

Column or Bar Charts

If you want to make direct comparisons and have multiple points to share, you can go with a column or bar chart. A column chart has the bars vertically on display, while the bar version has them horizontally to compare the data points.

These charts exist to simplify information and quickly compare the differences. For example, you can compare your views on social media sites and show that the biggest bars have the most ideas. Likewise, the group can quickly see which site draws the most attention.

You should go with column charts if you need to compare more points and use bar charts when you want to emphasize the differences. They may have a similar design, but you can get different points across to your audience as you utilize them correctly.

Waterfall Charts

You can go with something unique and simple, such as a waterfall chart, using a Qlik Sense extension. Waterfall charts show how much something changes over time, so it resembles a waterfall since portions of it drop from one spot to the other.

For example, if your sales improved with time, you can show how they performed for each product. You can color-code them to show people when they go up or down with time. You can show them for a month, year, or any period.

You can use them to easily compare different parts of your business or products with each other. People can see where your business performs well and where it falls short, so you can adjust your plan and make changes accordingly through the Qlik Sense extension.

Conclusion

Data visualization requires you to simplify information, make it easy to process, and show it to others. You’ll have an easier time getting people to understand it as you utilize charts, so pick the best types available and help others to understand key data points.

As they know the information through your simple-to-use charts, they can think about it and apply the data to make improvements.  See which charts work best for you and utilize them to make your point.