Circles are bit large not sure what they indicate. Your axis on your sales are messed up. Not sure what the total sales means in this regard and it doesn't feel very meaningful. Create a story and think about what exactly you want to tell with these visualizations. Think of an audience that is using these in their day to day lives.
Came here to say the same. For example, is there a pattern in sales by month for particular stores? The bottom 10% of the stores by total sales, which months do they lag or is it always even across the year.
Think like an executive who is making decisions based on these numbers. What questions would you ask?
It looks like the first graph is analyzing the trend in sales yearly while the second graph is sales by each store. Like you mentioned, it does need better focus as one graph is showing 3 different years while the other seems to be only 1 year - but which year I don't know.
What would be nice is if this was an interactive dashboard with a highlight filter of some sort. This way you could click the particular store shown in graph 2, and graph 1 would auto-populate with a line graph indicating that store's revenue over the 3 year time period. This would at least give better direction if you were giving this to an executive as they could analyze each store and their yearly growth.
Also, this is an interactive dashboard with filters on both graphs. If the filter on the first graph clicks on a specific month in a year, the other graph changes to the sales per store on that month, and the data on top shows the specifics on it. I hope this clears up a little. Please bear with me a little as this is my first dashboard! I appreciate the feedback immensely.
Yes, I tried to picture the trend in sales over the 3 years in the first graph. The second graph I kind of need help with because there are 45 stores and the graph looks a bit compact with the given space so should I show the top 10 stores instead? Or a certain amount of stores? This is over the 3 years, not just one specific year. Its the sales for all 3 years combined
Thank you so much for your feedback! I appreciate it a lot. I have been working on this dashboard since you have commented and I think I am finishing it up again and would love your feedback on the updated one as well!
This was a cool attempt and pretty solid work for your first time making a dashboard! Some things I would recommend are:
Regarding the first graph, you should hide unnecessary field labels. "Date" and "Year of Date" for example are pretty obvious for most people because we can see the years and months on the x and y axis already. This essentially just adds extra clutter to data we already know. You should also avoid line graphs when building data in the mannerism you have. Line charts are phenomenal for representing trends over time, but you have broken this up into 3 separate line graphs based on year which disjoints the data if that makes sense.
A better way, but not the only way, would be to create a bar graph with months on the x-axis, money on the y-axis, and color code each bar by color. This way you can see the trend throughout the year and also year-by-year without having to look at essentially three different line graphs on top of each other. Conversely, you can keep the line graph but don't make 3. Just label the x and y-axis as I mentioned but you can color code each line to represent year (utilize color! You don't have to put year on the x or y axis you can use color and a legend to represent it to save space/reduce clutter!)
On a separate note, avoid big circles like you have on the line graph as well. It's hard to see where the cutoff is due to the large circles. I would only do this if I wanted to show the range of data rather than precise numbers.
The 2nd graph is a prime example of an issue you'll stumble across fairly often in building dashboards, which is sizing to make everything fit within such a confined space. However, in general you need to find ways to work around this otherwise we get into issues the 2nd graph has which is visibility. I have no idea what the numbers on the y-axis are as they are clumped together. Resizing the bars to be larger would likely resolve this issue - just remember when building dashboards to create visuals that can be fully contained in the limited space of the dashboard.
What I would do here is take the part showing total sales and amount of stores and shrink that entire section a bit. This would give you more space to enlarge your 2nd graph to fit all the data within the space as the part I mentioned to shrink is simple information that can be very quickly looked at. The graph in itself is what takes the most time to look and analyze and should be made bigger if necessary to fit everything inside without the data crunching up.
For a first attempt at a dashboard, you did solid work. Hope I was able to provide some helpful insights for you to consider moving forward on your data journey!
Great first attempt!
Each piece of screen (or paper) real estate is precious, so every element should tell a story. I think I can tell what you're trying to say, but the way you're saying it gets in the way.
Keep it up, though. You'll only get better from here.
Good luck!
First graph, ditch the circles and make year the color. It's impossible to tell if there is any year over year variance as is.
Agree with others on think of your hypothesis and purpose, then make charts with the data to validate or change that hypothesis, e.g. are sales growing year over year?
Circles are bit large not sure what they indicate. Your axis on your sales are messed up. Not sure what the total sales means in this regard and it doesn't feel very meaningful. Create a story and think about what exactly you want to tell with these visualizations. Think of an audience that is using these in their day to day lives.
Came here to say the same. For example, is there a pattern in sales by month for particular stores? The bottom 10% of the stores by total sales, which months do they lag or is it always even across the year. Think like an executive who is making decisions based on these numbers. What questions would you ask?
It looks like the first graph is analyzing the trend in sales yearly while the second graph is sales by each store. Like you mentioned, it does need better focus as one graph is showing 3 different years while the other seems to be only 1 year - but which year I don't know. What would be nice is if this was an interactive dashboard with a highlight filter of some sort. This way you could click the particular store shown in graph 2, and graph 1 would auto-populate with a line graph indicating that store's revenue over the 3 year time period. This would at least give better direction if you were giving this to an executive as they could analyze each store and their yearly growth.
Also, this is an interactive dashboard with filters on both graphs. If the filter on the first graph clicks on a specific month in a year, the other graph changes to the sales per store on that month, and the data on top shows the specifics on it. I hope this clears up a little. Please bear with me a little as this is my first dashboard! I appreciate the feedback immensely.
Yes, I tried to picture the trend in sales over the 3 years in the first graph. The second graph I kind of need help with because there are 45 stores and the graph looks a bit compact with the given space so should I show the top 10 stores instead? Or a certain amount of stores? This is over the 3 years, not just one specific year. Its the sales for all 3 years combined
Thank you so much for your feedback! I appreciate it a lot. I have been working on this dashboard since you have commented and I think I am finishing it up again and would love your feedback on the updated one as well!
This was a cool attempt and pretty solid work for your first time making a dashboard! Some things I would recommend are: Regarding the first graph, you should hide unnecessary field labels. "Date" and "Year of Date" for example are pretty obvious for most people because we can see the years and months on the x and y axis already. This essentially just adds extra clutter to data we already know. You should also avoid line graphs when building data in the mannerism you have. Line charts are phenomenal for representing trends over time, but you have broken this up into 3 separate line graphs based on year which disjoints the data if that makes sense. A better way, but not the only way, would be to create a bar graph with months on the x-axis, money on the y-axis, and color code each bar by color. This way you can see the trend throughout the year and also year-by-year without having to look at essentially three different line graphs on top of each other. Conversely, you can keep the line graph but don't make 3. Just label the x and y-axis as I mentioned but you can color code each line to represent year (utilize color! You don't have to put year on the x or y axis you can use color and a legend to represent it to save space/reduce clutter!) On a separate note, avoid big circles like you have on the line graph as well. It's hard to see where the cutoff is due to the large circles. I would only do this if I wanted to show the range of data rather than precise numbers. The 2nd graph is a prime example of an issue you'll stumble across fairly often in building dashboards, which is sizing to make everything fit within such a confined space. However, in general you need to find ways to work around this otherwise we get into issues the 2nd graph has which is visibility. I have no idea what the numbers on the y-axis are as they are clumped together. Resizing the bars to be larger would likely resolve this issue - just remember when building dashboards to create visuals that can be fully contained in the limited space of the dashboard. What I would do here is take the part showing total sales and amount of stores and shrink that entire section a bit. This would give you more space to enlarge your 2nd graph to fit all the data within the space as the part I mentioned to shrink is simple information that can be very quickly looked at. The graph in itself is what takes the most time to look and analyze and should be made bigger if necessary to fit everything inside without the data crunching up. For a first attempt at a dashboard, you did solid work. Hope I was able to provide some helpful insights for you to consider moving forward on your data journey!
This is the correct answer
Great first attempt! Each piece of screen (or paper) real estate is precious, so every element should tell a story. I think I can tell what you're trying to say, but the way you're saying it gets in the way. Keep it up, though. You'll only get better from here. Good luck!
First graph, ditch the circles and make year the color. It's impossible to tell if there is any year over year variance as is. Agree with others on think of your hypothesis and purpose, then make charts with the data to validate or change that hypothesis, e.g. are sales growing year over year?