Types of visualisation ideal for presenting pitches
Information and Advice from Minerra
In today’s digital world where everything is measured according to the visual appeal, every manager should read at least one data visualisation book to understand the power that it has over people’s judgment. In this article, we are going to cover the types of visualisation that are ideal for presenting pitches to your colleagues or clients.
Choosing the right chart to convey your message can be a game changer during a meeting, and knowing your subject and how to present it well with the help of a visualisation tool can win you the account.
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Minerra dashboard software is an excellent tool for merging data from multiple platforms and creating a great and understandable visualisation for the presentation of data. When you are creating a strategy for results promotion, you need to think it through and decide on the story you want to tell and on the punch lines that would catch everyone’s attention.
You will also want to make your charts clean, simple and pretty to look at, so the point you want to convey to people can be understood by just looking at the board.
This is not always easy; on the contrary, however, there are multiple options you can choose from and find the one that helps you present your idea in the best possible way. Everyone loves a useful chart, so put your thinking cap on and let’s give you some ideas and tips about chart selection in the next section of the article.
Types of charts and graphs
The following suggestions contain the most commonly used types of charts and graphs by industry professionals. We included descriptions, tips and tricks you might find beneficial when you’re choosing the one that best tells your idea.
Number charts
A real-time number chart is the simples form of keeping people up to date with sales/trends/customers/expansion. It’s relatively easy to build because you just have to input the tracking numbers, but don’t forget to mark the period you’re tracking for the objective because it will help you emphasise your point.
You can also add a trend indicator so you can compare numbers. However, you should be careful not to use too many number charts in one presentation since they can distract people from your story.
Line charts
Line charts are perfect for showing trends of volatility and tendencies of the market (like Bitcoin line charts). They can help you show how data changes over specified periods of time, and they are very easy for reading and understanding. You need to be careful not to add to many line variables in the creation of the line chart, because what was supposed to be simple can easily become complicated and confuse your audience.
Pie Charts
The great side to pies is that everyone is familiar with the concept and can read them well without any previous knowledge, and they are convenient if you want to show sections of the whole and how that translates into percentages. On the other hand, this can be useful to you only if the pitch you want to make doesn’t require precision and it’s limited on past interpretation of data.
Maps
Maps are one of the most beautiful types of visualisation you can use during a presentation, and they are beneficial in showing geographical data. Maps have been instrumental at showing world trends for governments, NGOs, big companies and other successful businesses around the globe. However, no matter how remarkable they are as a visualisation tool, you shouldn’t use them if your pitch has nothing to do with geographical data.
Bar graphs
Bar graphs come in two main categories, horizontal and column graphs, and both of these are used for specific purposes. You should use horizontal graphs when you’re doing a comparative analysis and columns for showing serial data at one particular period. Another option is to use the stacked column chart, which is perfect for showing percentages.
Scatter plots
Scatter plots are perfect if you have one independent variable and one depended variable combined with a lot of data sets you want to present cleanly and elegantly. The correlation between the variables is clearly marked on the chart, and you can show how positive, negative or nonexistent it is. As you understood by now, this chart is only usable if you have to show a correlation between variables.
Gauge charts
The speedometer charts use one assessment/measure within a numerical context to show progress against key business indicators. You should use them if you want to point out one specific line of development over a specified period of time; any more variables, and you might puzzle the people at the meeting. They also take up a lot of space on the dashboard, so if you have to point out more than one, then it would be better to choose a different type of chart.
Spider charts
Spider charts (they look like webs) are good for working with more than three quantitative variables for evaluation on one or more subjects. The trick with these charts is that they are not easy to pull off, even though they are showing in-depth analysis.
Moreover, people are not that familiar with them so you might have to explain them in more details. However, if you make them comprehensible and integrate them into your story, they can become an excellent asset during the presentation.
Area charts
Area charts are perfect for following trends and tendencies, and they can be instrumental if you want to present consecutive data points in a timeline. Area charts are flexible as a visualisation tool, but it’s not recommended for you to use more than three variables, and even for that, you would have to do a stacked area chart.
Chart types to compare multiple categories
You can use most of the above chart types to compare multiple categories. However, for a prolific type of visualisation, you should use the spider chart. If you want to play it safe, the bar graphs will do the job.
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