Disclaimer: Contains silly memes, shameless plugging, and awesome charts!
It may come as a surprise, but it’s not our TikTok videos or our predilection for wars that set us apart from other species. It’s our ability to recognize and process patterns that gets us to the top of the food chain!
That said, patterns aren’t much help, if we can’t get to them. And that will only happen after we collect and sift data and analyze it. But who really has the time to first go digging through oodles of info, and then use it to make charts and reports?
Unfortunately, it’s the only way we’d get to draw conclusions from all the data we’ve collected. Aside from that, we must also keep updating those pesky charts and reports to stay current. But before we sell you on which chart tools to use and why, let’s examine some uses for charts and reports:
What Use Do I Have for Chart Tools?
Think charts are at the root of everything corporate and evil? Well, they don’t have to be! You can leverage them for various purposes–we’re confident we can change your stance with just three:
1. Client Communication
Sometimes, a text or five just doesn't cut it. For instance, you may be about to close a deal after working hard to land a client. Or, you need to show a client how you moved heaven and earth while laboring on their project for a month. Either way, gift wrap your presentation by populating it with graphs that show the hard work behind the numbers.
2. Team Communication
Those who manage teams are usually bugging them to get hourly–or whatever frequency works–status reports. Or you may have some other needs that only at-a-glance reports can satisfy, such as monthly company sales. In such cases, slapping figures on a slide won’t be as eye-catching, would it? Internal meetings, too, can liven up with interactive graphics and charts.
3. Internal Communication
Tracking things personal to you and keeping yourself motivated also gets more manageable with charting. P.S. If you hate updating even more than making charts, look for tools like Image Charts that do it for you–dynamically!
Other Benefits of Chart Tools
- We learn and absorb more quickly when presented with visual information than any other kind.
- You can implement charts to simultaneously free more screen space and present lots of information in a compact form!
Fine, which Chart Tools should I Use?
Did we convince you about the usefulness of charts or what? So, now that you’ve come over to the chart side, deploy charts for everything! Like, summarizing work expenses or recapping the performance of your sales team in the previous quarter. You can populate all kinds of reports with them.
Aaaaand, we’ve just the chart tools to help you do that:
1. Lucidchart
You can create, edit, and export the work you do on Lucidchart. That’s because your stuff remains on the cloud–this also lets teams collaborate in real-time. It presents users with a huge selection of chart types to work with. Lucidchart is well-known among chart automation tools users for its universal compatibility with various browsers, operating systems, integrations, and formats.
However, you must create a Lucidchart account to use the app.
2. Datawrapper
One of the chart tools specifically created for news stories. It’s also why most of its offerings are interactive.
Below are some examples of the charts you can create on Datawrapper:
- Column
- Bar
- Line
- Election donuts
- Scatter
- Area
Datawrapper doesn’t allow you to use just any data source. Additionally, even with its native integrations, you’ll have to copy-and-paste the data into the graph maker yourself.
3. Chart Maker Pro
Another offering off our chart tools list comes with a friendly white interface. The app’s easy-to-use, so you enter your data into a table and have it make the diagram that best presents it–loads of choices. When done, you can download your charts or connect with your social accounts and share via the app.
Like Lucidchart, Chart Maker Pro also requires registration before use.
4. Image Charts
One of the best chart tools that favors instant creation and sharing. You can also integrate it with Zapier or Make, and have it automagically pull data, make, update, and send your charts to a wide range of destinations, such as Email, Team and Slack, Visualforce, and MailChimp.
Image Charts is one of the few chart automation tools that lets you set up #nocode automated workflows, using the tech stack you’re comfortable with! What’s more, the charts you make with a custom API come with unique URL and embed codes. So, you can embed them across different apps and browsers!
Image Charts has minimal request latency and a global CDN, allowing your creations to travel to the digital destination of your choice within minutes. It works as a Bar Graph Maker, Line Graph Maker, and Pie Chart Maker.
But, you can also use it to make:
- Scatter Charts
- Sparkline Charts
- Donut Charts
- Polar, Radar, and Bubble Charts
Conclusion
Each chart tool from our list above will let you take your reports to the ultimate level. So, lob a graph at anything and everything! Think about crafting custom dashboards or use it to track the right-for-you sales metrics. Working on a project and want to see how you can do even better on the next one? Monitoring team performance? Put a chart maker to work!
FAQs
1. Which chart is best for comparison?
Bar charts are the best comparison tools in most cases and for almost all kinds of data. That’s because it is easier to match the length of the different bars than figuring out the sizes of pie chart slices in a single glance. So, start making yours on Image Charts right away–for free!
2. What are the best tools for creating charts?
The best data visualization and chart tools include Lucidchart, Google Charts, Grafana, Chartist. Js, Datawrapper, Tableau, FusionCharts, Chart Maker Pro, and Image Charts.
3. What is a chart used for?
You can use it to compare data sets visually, particularly when there’s lots of information to be presented or understood.
