BlueGlass - 7 Excel Charts You Should Be Using Daily [Video Tutorial]

 

Here are the latest updates for joe.autoblog@gmail.com   "BlueGlass" - 1 new article 7 Excel Charts You Should Be Using Daily [Video Tutorial] More Recent Articles Search BlueGlass 7 Excel Charts You Should Be Using Daily [Video Tutorial] In keeping with my revolt against ugly data, we're going to be turning our attention this time to how to make data visual. If you missed Part 1 of my Making Data Sexy series, I covered cool tips for formatting data in Excel, including how to: Format as a table Format cells Filter and sort your data Use conditional formatting (the only way to add sex appeal to a table) De-clutter your spreadsheets Now it's time for the fun stuff… In the video below I'll show you how to set up graphs in Excel (because PCs and Macs don’t differ that much when it comes to charts I just did one video).  I will be compiling into 15 minutes what has taken me a couple years of intensive concentration to learn. It’s everything I learned the hard way by poring over Excel books at the gym, in nail and beauty salons, on airplanes, at sporting events, you name it. Yes, I’m that girl. You’re welcome. But before we jump in, it's really important to understand when to use each chart type. I'm going to just cover the ones I use daily — and so should you. They’re easy once you understand the basics. Column Chart This is my chart du jour. There is rarely a day that goes by that I don’t at least reference one. The column chart is great for most tasks. You can chart out one item at a time like this: Click for larger image.   Or if you have multiple items, you have two choices. You can either cluster them like this: Click for larger image.   Or stack them like this: Click for larger image.   Line Chart If I have a lot of data points I'm charting out, I tend to use line charts. They're especially ideal to show fluctuations over time. Here's an example of one that shows Facebook engagements over a period of a month: Click for larger image. You can do stacked line charts over time, but I'm not a fan. I'd much prefer to display the data as an… Area Chart In the same way I'm not a fan of stacked line charts, I'm only a fan of stacked area charts. The reason is that if it's clustered, you could have data hiding behind whatever data series is in front. It’s tantamount to sticking the shortest kid in the class behind Baby Huey for a class pic. I was one of the two shortest kids in my class all through elementary school (I shot up to average in high school). That would not be a cool thing to do to your vertically-challenged data. However, the stacked area chart is great for charts that have a lot of data points because you see how each piece contributes to the total, like so: Click for larger image. Pie Chart The pie chart is to be treated with caution. I’ll use a pie chart if I have less than 10 data points, but I try to keep it closer to six.  Here’s an example of one that I pulled apart slightly to make the organic traffic pop more. Click for larger image. Combination Charts There are times when you want to show two different metrics that have either different units of measurement or are so different in their values, one data set dwarfs the other. Good examples of these would be visits vs. bounce rate, visits vs. conversion rate, unique visitors vs. revenue, conversions vs. conversion rate, page authority and domain authority vs. number of partial match links, etc. I'll show you in the video below how to create charts like this: Click for larger image.  Where to Go From Here If you’ve read the first post in this series (and watched the video) and then grasped these simple techniques, you can go test your skills by checking out our post on how to do competitive analysis with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. But if you want to kick off your Excel exploits by practicing with the data I use in the video, I compiled a starter spreadsheet that contains just the data for all the charts I went through here. Go play with the data and get comfortable with Excel’s charting tools. The Goods I’m (barely) resisting the urge to say 15 minutes will save you 15 hours of data or more on wrestling with data. But you can be the judge of that. Enjoy, data gumshoes! P.S. Being from New Jersey, I have never talked as slowly as I did in this video my life! But, per Jon Henshaw’s advice, I recorded the video first and then made the audio to fit, and I gave myself too much time. I’ll get the hang over this eventually. I also aim to remember to plug my microphone in every time I record. Derp!  To stay posted on our “Making Data Sexy” series, you may want to subscribe to our blog. 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