This is the age of big data. It has changed how we improve every element of our businesses, from the layout of a web page to the marketing message you deliver to customers. By analyzing data, you can figure out exactly what your customers want. Of course, no one can look at a sea of raw data and extract any kind of insight. Numbers, letters, and data points mean nothing to the human eye. This is where data visualization comes in. 

Whether you know it or not, you’ve likely used data visualization. For example, many website analytics tools use pie charts to depict traffic sources. Visualizing important information like this will help you make better decisions for your business. Here are some great tips to help you make the most of your data!

What Is Data Visualization?

In essence, data visualization is a visual representation of data. Using graphics like charts, plots, animations, and infographics, data visualization helps stakeholders understand what we’re looking at when we observe a data set. Tableau explains that our eyes are drawn to colors and patterns, so we can quickly identify trends and outliers in charts that are invisible to us in large data sets.

Effective data visualization is more than just plotting data sets on graphs. It’s about telling a story. It involves identifying what you want to find out and how you’re going to get that point across to the viewer, balancing both form and function to create an engaging graphic that both captures the eye and conveys the right message.

Why Invest in Data Visualization?

Making data more understandable can benefit your business in countless ways. Because our human brains can interpret visual information more easily than written information, data visualization enables swift decision-making. For example, you can glance at a graph and make a quick decision to pivot your marketing strategy to increase your ROI. With these tools, you and your team can make effective business decisions without consulting a data scientist.

What’s more, data visualization doesn’t require much of an investment at all. Many of these tools exist and are designed primarily for those without experience in data analysis. You can also hire illustrators to create unique, customized graphics.

How to Use Data Visualization in Marketing

Data visualization can offer significant value in terms of marketing improvements. Understanding your customers’ preferences is vital to the success of your marketing campaigns, and the only way to discover this is through data collection and analysis. For example, Startup Bonsai explains that you can use data visualization to showcase customer purchase trends over time, compare your sales strategies across different products, or break down the interests of your social media followers. 

You can even include your data visualizations in your marketing materials. Graphics, particularly motion graphics and animation, add a lot of value to ads, blog content, and social media posts. If you want to convey information to your viewers in a short amount of time — and you do, because attention spans are only shrinking — then you need to use graphics. 

Data Visualization for Business Process Improvements

You can also use data visualization to find solutions to your organization’s most pressing problems. Inefficient business processes waste time and money, but data visualization makes it possible to identify weak points and track improvements as you implement fixes. For example, charting out data related to client onboarding can help you identify procedures creating bottlenecks in the process and causing project delays. Visualizing accounting data can help you identify potential problems in your invoicing or payroll process. The list goes on. Use data visualization to streamline your business and you’ll never look back!

Data Visualization Tools

You can use all kinds of helpful visualization tools to bring your data to life. Certain tools, like Tableau, produce interactive illustrations that will engage your audience. Others, such as Infogram, focus on linking graphs with real-time data, ensuring graphics are always up to date to show the most recent information. Beyond these, there are several other tools that can help you better understand complex data. Do some research and look for tools that produce the types of data visualizations needed for your business.

Your business stakeholders may also be interested in seeing your business represented through data visualization. These illustrations can show how successful specific initiatives were or provide grounds for new projects. You may need to share the reports you’ve generated as images in a digital report, or combine them into a larger report for print distribution. Either way, knowing how to convert PDF to Word using a conversion tool is important. Simply drop in the file and select the new file type before saving.

Put Your Data to Good Use

Data visualization can help you maximize the value of your business data. By using visualization tools to create organized graphics, you can extract more meaning from your data and make effective business decisions. Start playing around with data visualization and see what it can do for you!