Excel: Using the right Chart for the right message
Teri-Leigh Peach
Dynamic senior level marketing consultant helping businesses grow their brand, stand out against their competition and develop robust strategies that bring new sales to their business.
Excel Charts support making effective business decisions by answering what is happening and why it is happening?
Below are some guidelines for selecting the best chart type for the question you are wanting to answer:
· Line Chart: A line chart is an effective way of communicating trends and patterns over time (months, years etc). For example: Is your sales increasing/growing or is it decreasing/declining over time?
· Column Chart: A column chart is an effective way to compare performance across different categories (People, Products, Places etc.). For example, who or what is performing better or worse?
· Bar Chart: A bar chart can be used effectively to rank and compare performance. For example, who is performing better or worse? Excel Pivot charts also have a very nice feature for selecting your top “x” of bottom “x performers.
·Table with Conditional Formatting: A table is a very effective way of knowing precise values, e.g. Sales Values. The use of conditional formatting enhances comparative performance and highlights additional insights, for example; performance against targets.
Map: Office 365 subscribers have a very nice option to create a Map Chart. This uses Bing Maps to plot the locations and gives a great visual representation of performance by Region.
