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If you are a webmaster, you know how the visual representation of data on your site is essential. Marketers and web admins use data visualization to understand numerical data more efficiently. Furthermore, visualizing data facilitates data analysis; therefore, it takes less time.
You can use a CRO tool to visualize customers’ journeys if you are a website owner. This way you can easily track the leaks and grant a smooth buying experience.
This article will look at the importance and different types of visual representation for analyzing website data. We will also discuss some visual representation examples and how this technique can help you to improve your website.
Read on and find all you need about visual representation for optimizing your website.
Before we start, if you are a webmaster looking for a cost-effective solution to get deep insight by visualizing your website’s data, make sure to sign up on WatchThemLive! It is a behavior analytics tool that visualizes users’ journeys and interactions using heatmaps and session replays.
What Is Visual Representation
Before we delve into the topic, you need to know the visual representation meaning. In a nutshell, visual representation is the use of visual elements like graphs, charts, and maps to represent data and information.
It’s the best replacement for textual explanations of data. For example, using different colors, website heatmap tools represent which areas of a web page have created more engagement. But, explaining the same information in just words is a heavy cross to bear.
To discover some visual representation examples, keep scrolling.
Visual Representation Examples
Nowadays, there are various types of data visualization used in a wide range of applications from business dashboards to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we bring some historical and contemporary data visualization examples.
1. Napoleon Chart Map
This chart has become famous because of the detailed illustration of Napoleon’s story of marching to Moscow in order to conquer the city. It’s one of the best visual representation examples. There are some wide lines on the map that represent the number of soldiers (around 470,000) and some paths toward Moscow that are shown by colors.
2. New Chart of History
Joseph Priestley is famous because of his unique visual representation charts, the chart of biography, and the chart of history, which tell the fascinating visual stories of history. The first one represented the timeline of well-known leaders and philosophers who were active in history at that time and the second one represented the timeline of major empires and cultures.
3. Interactive Government Budget
During Barack Obama’s presidency, the white house decided to put the government programs in context and used a chart to show the budget breakdown of the United States in 2016. This particular data visualization grabs the world’s attention not because of publishing the major world power’s interactive budget visualization, but rather for providing a way to communicate with taxpayers.
4. Film Dialogue
Hannah Anderson and Matt Daniels broke down the scripts for 2000 famous movies to question gender disparity in pop culture. They used visualization to categorize Disney movies and compare the percentage of spoken lines of dialogue for men and female roles.
5. Vincent Van Gogh Color Plates
This one is not about the historical visual representation examples, but it’s worth mentioning here.
Painting is all about the visualization of ideas. Therefore, it’s impossible to analyze a masterpiece like Vincent Van Gogh – Cafe Terrace at Night in texts only. Visual presentation of data about color plates in this painting opens the curtain over the color theme of this painting even for nonprofessional eyes.
What Is the Importance of Visual Representation of Data
Simply put, visual representation helps us better understand quantitative data by using visual elements such as charts, graphs, colors, etc. Once you understand the visual representation meaning, you can quickly grasp trends, correlations, and patterns that might otherwise be difficult to understand in raw numerical form. This is because our brains can process visual information more easily.
Visualizing your website’s data allows you to notice trends and patterns that are hard to recognize using numerical data. It helps you figure out what changes and what improvements you need to make more quickly. Graphical representation of data also enables you to design more effective strategies and make better decisions.
Data visualization is beneficial if you have to deal with a large amount of data, as analyzing it is more time-consuming.
Even if you can successfully gain insights from your data without visualizing it, explaining them to others wouldn’t be easy. Using visual representation methods is an excellent way to communicate data analysis more effectively.
How Does Visual Representation of Data Work
Anyone in the marketing world knows that seeing is believing. This is because of the way our eyes communicate with our brains. As we saw in visual representation examples, many concepts are more effectively conveyed through visualizations than through text alone.
In our daily routine of life, we can figure out what’s going on just by looking around and seeing the objects. Our brains interpret this information to help us understand abstract concepts. Similarly, data visualization communicates concepts and ideas so our brains can understand them. For example, a line chart shows how things change, and a bar chart helps you compare values over time.
Common Visual Representation of Information Use Cases
Here we will mention some of the most common use cases for the visual representation of information in different areas:
1. Sales and Marketing
According to the research conducted by the Magna media agency, 50% of all worldwide advertising budgets were spent online at the end of 2022. Therefore, marketing teams must know their web traffic sources and their web domains’ revenue. Thanks to the different methods of visual representations of information, it’s simple to examine the traffic they have gained over time via their marketing activities.
2. Healthcare
Visual representation of data is crucial in the medical community. Take choropleth maps as an example. Choropleth maps are among the most important tools in the healthcare industry. These maps show how a specific variable, such as lung disease, distributes over different territories. Therefore, they help scientists obtain the needed information out of it. By leveraging the power of FHIR servers, healthcare providers can create visual representations of data that are accurate, up-to-date, and easy to interpret.
3. Finance
When deciding whether to buy or sell an asset, finance professionals must keep track of the performance of their investment selections. Candlestick charts are trading tools that aid finance professionals in analyzing price movements over time by displaying crucial information. Likewise, data analysts and finance experts can spot trends by examining how prices have changed over time.
Another well-known example of visual presentation of data in the finance industry is stuck market maps. It’s a depiction of real-time and historical market information. It takes only a glance to understand whether it was a good day for the market.
4. Politics
Visual representations of information are used frequently in politics. It can represent complex ideas and data sets in an easy-to-understand and engaging way. An example is a geographical map that shows political parties where their votes come from.
Best Data Visualization Tool for Website
WatchThemLive is a leading platform for visual representation of website data and execution of deep analysis on website performance.
You should know that website data visualization is essential if you want to effortlessly observe your website performance and keep everything on track. It helps you understand how satisfying website UI/UX is. Also, visual representations of data help you track customer satisfaction.
This platform provides you with a set of features, such as heatmaps, for data visualization. WatchThemLive visualizes users’ interactions with the help of a continuum of colors.
In addition, this service offers a website analytics tool for measuring website performance and analyzing user behavior. Plus, WatchThemLive grants CRO tools like session recording and goal tracking for improving your website conversion rates.
Types of Visual Representations of Data
There are many types of visual representations, and each can help you in different ways. Here are some of the most popular data visualization types and techniques.
1- Line Charts
Line charts are one of the most straightforward types of visual representations. They display changes and trends over time. For example, you can use a line chart to present the number of clicks your call to action has received over the past week or to show your total sales in a year.
2- Bar Charts
Bar charts show information over time like line charts. But they are more useful when comparing different variables across time. For example, a bar chart can help you assess your shopping cart’s abandonment rate on different devices.
3- Heat Maps
Heat maps are one of the most powerful visualizations of a website’s data. They provide marketers and webmasters with valuable information about user behavior and allow them to monitor the digital experience of the users effectively. Moreover, they are simple and easy to understand.
Heat maps visualize data using colors, and they enable you to track users’ activities such as clicks, taps, scrolling, etc., throughout your website.
Heat mapping can help you in many ways, such as:
- It gives you a comprehensive understanding of your audience.
- You can understand your website’s issues more quickly.
- The information helps you create a better user experience.
- It’s an excellent tool for usability testing.
Find out more about heatmaps here: Heatmaps: The Complete Guide
Are you looking for data visualization tools to create heat maps for your website? WatchThemLive offers a heat mapping service that provides you with click maps. With the click maps, you can measure the effectiveness of your CTAs, track micro-conversions, eliminate distractions, and so much more.
WatchThemLive is also a valuable session replay software which is another excellent way to track your website’s visitors.
Want to try out WatchThemLive heat maps? Sign up now!
4- Scatter Plots
Scatter plots present the value of two variables with points. They help you find correlations between the two variables and see how they are distributed. Scatter charts are used to identify trends. They are also convenient when it comes to detecting outliers in your data.
For example, you can use scatter plots to show the relationship between your shares on social media channels and the visits directed from those networks.
5- Bubble Charts
Bubble charts are three-dimensional scatter plots in which bubbles are used instead of points. The bubbles have different sizes that present the third variable on the chart. The critical thing about bubble charts is that they can display different values in one chart. For example, you can use bubble charts to represent the relationship between sales and advertising.
6- Pie Charts
Pie charts are usually used for the visual representation of numerical proportions and percentages. However, this type of data visualization is not suitable for comparing data. For example, you can use a pie chart to demonstrate your website’s bounce rate on different devices or your business budget allocation.
7- Donut Charts
For visual representation of data in more detail, a donut chart can be used instead of a pie chart. These graphs are very similar to each other. But in the donut chart, the center area is taken out. Therefore the data is more organized. It’s one of the common types of visual representation of data. For example, website visitor tracking tools use this chart to display information about website visitors’ locations.
8- Funnel Charts
Funnel charts are a visual representation of the steps in a process, usually the sales process. They are a great way to identify problems and barriers and optimize the sales funnel.
Each stage on the funnel shows a percentage. Generally, the first stage has the highest rate, and each step gets smaller than the previous one. So, the funnel chart helps you figure out at which stage a significant data reduction happens.
Funnels are very easy to understand, and by looking at the shape of the chart, you can quickly know if the process is working well or not.
Here are some examples of the data that you can visualize by funnel charts:
- Macro and micro conversions,
- Marketing campaign effectiveness,
- Shopping cart performance.
As you can see, the importance of visual representation of information in measuring website conversion rates is undeniable. Also, you can design charts with sales funnel software and analyze the customers’ journeys.
Look at the chart below as an example. You can use a digital marketing funnel chart to demonstrate your website conversions.
9- Tree Diagram
You have probably seen this type of data visualization in family trees. A tree diagram, also known as a hierarchical diagram, is more suited for data visualization rather than numerical data. It represents the information in progressive form, from top to bottom (or left to right).
FAQs on Visual Representation of Data
Since the visual representation of data is a broad concept, you might have lots of questions regarding this matter. Here, we are going to answer some of the most frequently asked questions to shed light on every query in your mind.
1. What Is an Example of a Visual Representation?
Any images, graphs, tables, designs, etc, that contain symbolic or direct information about something can be considered a visual representation. For example, forecast maps that contain information about wind, rain, and temperature are a well-known form of visual representation examples. Experts use these maps to represent the data in a comprehensible form.
2. Are Visual Representations Always Helpful in the Communication of Knowledge?
Yes, visual representation is always helpful when it comes to communicating knowledge. Generally, the human mind understands and remembers visualized data much more smoothly. Our brain thinks in pictures. And we process the visualized format of the data (pictures, graphs, charts, heat maps, etc,) 60,000 times faster than the textured format. So it’s pretty obvious that visual representation of knowledge is going to be a big help in transmitting the data.
3. What Is the Visual Representation Process?
In short, it is the process of translating an abstract or conceptual idea into a visual format in order to make the information more understandable. Different kinds of maps, charts, plots, and designs can be utilized during this transaction.
4. How Do You Visualize Website Data?
The best way for website data visualization is using data visualization tools for websites such as Google Charts and WatchThemLive. These tools help you measure conversion rates, analyze traffic sources of your website, and most importantly, indicate its key performances. Using visual displays of information helps you to understand and explain complicated web analysis data like a breeze.
Data and Information Visual Representation Wrap-Up
Today, visual representation of data is helping many website owners improve their websites. Data visualization makes information much more understandable. Therefore, you need less time to analyze your website’s data. As a result, you will detect problems more quickly and take action as soon as possible.
Imagine you had a platform to help you with all these matters. WatchThemLive is exactly what you need. And you can have it for free! So, sign up here to make the process easier and more efficient.
There are many methods to visualize your website’s data, and we introduced the most important ones in this article. Make sure to use these data visualization techniques to get the most out of your website.
