How to Make a Sankey Diagram to Visualize Data?

A Sankey Diagram says more than a thousand Pie Charts.

The chart is best-suited for visualizing data with flow-like characteristics, like energy and cost breakdowns.

Why?

The flow data type is complex and bulky. Besides, it can easily overwhelm you, particularly if you lack a suitable chart for the job. Also, you’ll be scratching the surface if you use ill-suited visualization designs to show insights into the flow data type.

We recommend you try a Sankey Diagram because it will save your time immensely. Additionally, the visualization design is amazingly simple to read and interpret.

Google Sheets have a difficult process of creating Sankey Diagrams. But we do not recommend you to get rid of the Google Sheets. Because you can get to an instant and ready-made Sankey Chart by installing a specific add-on in your Google Sheets.

In this blog you will learn:

Table of Content:

1. What is a Sankey Diagram?
2. What Are the Components of the Sankey Diagram?
3. How to Make a Sankey Diagram? Step by Step Guide with Example
4. Video Tutorial: How to Create a Sankey Chart in Excel?
5. Video Tutorial: How to Create a Sankey Chart in Google Sheets?
6. Benefits of a Sankey Diagram
7. What does the Sankey Diagram Represent?
8. Wrap Up

Before jumping right into the how-to guide, we’ll address the following question: What is a Sankey Diagram?

What is a Sankey Diagram?

A Sankey Diagram is a visualization chart you can use to display insights of data flow through stages or phases.

While initially, the charts were used only to visualize energy flows in an engineering system, they’re now used in other disciplines and sectors of the global economy.

The chart gets its name from Matthew Sankey, a captain in the Irish Royal Engineers. During the 1890s, he used visual illustration to display the efficiency and purpose of various steam engine components.

He understood that 100% efficiency in a steam engine was almost impossible. This diagram helped the army captain to highlight the areas with significant losses.

Today, we use Sankey Diagrams in the following fields, namely:

• Analyzing Cash Flow in Finance
• Marketing
• Business analytics
• Supply chain
• Customer Journey

Whenever you have materials or resources entering a process, leverage this chart to display insights into the efficiency of usage.

Keep reading because we’ll take you through how to make a Sankey Diagram in the coming sections.

What are the Components of a Sankey Diagram?

• Nodes

Nodes are the vertical bars, which reflect the value of the metric under study.

• Links

Links are the horizontal flow lines that connect with nodes. Remember, each color of the link matches the node. The wider the link, the higher value of the data point under study.

Let’s get to the main part of the blog: How to make a Sankey Diagram?

How to Make a Sankey Diagram? Step by Step Guide with Example

Visualization is a form of analysis you can use to extract answers from your data. One of the common tools for visualizing data using different types of charts and graphs in Google Sheets.

However, the spreadsheet application lacks ready-made Sankey Diagrams.

We’re not advising you to do away with Google Sheets in favor of other expensive tools.

And this is because there’s an amazingly affordable data visualization tool that comes as an add-on you can easily install in Google Sheets to access insightful, ready-made, and easy-to-customize Sankey Diagrams. The tool is called ChartExpo.

So, what is ChartExpo?

ChartExpo is an add-on you can easily install in your Google Sheets without needing tutorials. By using ChartExpo you can easily create many complex and advance charts like Sankey Diagram in Excel and Google Sheets without any coding in a few clicks.

With many ready-to-go and insightful charts, graphs, and maps, the ChartExpo turns your complex, raw data into easy-to-interpret and visually appealing Google Sheets charts that tell data stories in real-time.

More benefits

• You don’t need coding, calculating, or drawing. Just enter your data and click “Create.” And ChartExpo will do the rest of the task.
• You can turn any spreadsheet into an engaging visualization chart, no matter the complexity of your data.
• With ChartExpo, you get interactive and dynamic graphs, maps, and charts. Your charts adjust whenever your data changes.
• The data visualization software makes communicating your custom charts and graphs effortless.
• You can even share your creative data visualization on your website or social media accounts. With ChartExpo you can export them to other programs, such as Google Docs.
• You can export your charts in JPEG, PDF, SVG, and PNG formats.

In the coming section, we’ll show you how to create Sankey Diagram using ChartExpo.

Example 1: Create Sankey Diagram in Google Sheets

This section will use a Sankey Chart in Google Sheets to visualize the data below.

Store	Category	Items	Brand	Units Sold
Online Store	Electronics	Mobile	Samsung	39
Online Store	Electronics	Tablet	Samsung	73
Online Store	Electronics	Laptop	Dell	156
Online Store	Garments	Jeans	Levi’s	46
Online Store	Garments	T-Shirt	H&M	104
Online Store	Garments	Jackets	Puma	41
Online Store	Furniture	Sofa	IKEA	73
Online Store	Furniture	Chair	Kartell	46
Online Store	Furniture	Desk	Stickley	43

To install ChartExpo into your Google Sheets, click this link.

• Open your Google Sheets.
• Open the worksheet and click the Extensions menu button.
• Once the Charts, Graphs, & Visualizations by ChartExpo tool drop-down menu shows, click the Open button.

• Click the Add new chart button to access the inventory of charts and graphs available.

• Once ChartExpo is loaded, you will see a list of charts. Look for “Sankey Chart”.

• Highlight your data and select the Metric option. Fill in the numerical numbers (in our case, we’ll use Units Sold).
• Select the Dimensions button and fill in the dimensional data (in our example, we’ll use Store, Category, Items, and Brand), as shown below.
• Complete the simple task by clicking the Create Chart button.

• Check out the final chart. 

Insights:

The Sankey Diagram above shows the order analysis of an online store.

• The highest order category is Electronics which contains almost 43% of orders.
• Most selling brand and the item is the Dell laptop which is 25% of total orders.

Example 2: Create Sankey Diagram in Microsoft Excel:

In this example, we will teach you how to create Sankey Diagram in Excel using the ChartExpo add-on for Excel. Follow the steps below to create Sankey Diagram in Excel.

• Click on your Excel spreadsheet to open your workbook.
• On your worksheet menu, click on Insert.
• The Insert menu will display the My Apps.
• Select ChartExpo add-in and click the Insert.
• Click on the Sankey Chart in the available charts list.
• After selecting the data click on Create Chart From Selection button.
• Check out the final Sankey Chart below.

In the next section, you will learn how to create a Sankey diagram in excel with the help of a video tutorial.

Video Tutorial: How to Create a Sankey Chart in Excel?

In the following video, you will learn how to make a Sankey diagram in Excel.

In the next section, you will learn how to create a Sankey diagram in Google Sheets with the help of a video tutorial.

Video Tutorial: How to Create a Sankey Chart in Google Sheets?

In the following video, you will learn how to make a Sankey diagram in Google Sheets.

Benefits of a Sankey Diagram

The chart makes it easy to spot the most significant changes in key metrics that matter to you. The Sankey Diagram is versatile and flexible. And this means you can leverage it to track costs, materials, marketing analytics, etc.

Remember, the movement of your data matters significantly. The key goal of Sankey analysis is to display insights into how and why particular metrics are changing.

A Sankey Diagram can help you uncover the most substantial fluctuations in your data across various categories or stages that matter to you.

The size of each link and node in the Sankey Diagram shows you the critical elements in your data sets.

Aside from data flow, the other key advantage of using Sankey is its bird’s-eye-view of key data points.

This high-level perspective is unbeatable, especially when you’re trying to analyze the efficiency of one of your processes, such as budget spending.

You can use a Sankey Diagram to visualize data from a wide range of industries, including:

• Supply chain management
• Marketing analysis
  • Visualizing Customer Journey
  • SWOT Analysis
• Energy production
  • Renewable Energy Chart
• Business procedures
• Expenditure on sectors like finance and budgeting
  • Cash Flow Analysis

What does the Sankey Diagram Represent?

A Sankey Diagram is one of the best charts for analyzing data with flow attributes, such as materials, funds, energy, etc. Each node is connected to the other via a link. The bigger the flow lines, the higher the metric value under study. The value of each metric under study is differentiated using contrasting colors.

Let’s say your goal is to establish how you spend your household budget.

The bird’s eye view insights would be your entire household budget. You can easily use separate nodes to differentiate significant versus non-essential costs.

In this scenario, the size of each node depicts how substantial each cost is to the household. If you notice that one of the most enormous flows depicts eating at restaurants, you’ll have an opportunity to decide whether to scale down.

FAQs:

Does Google Sheets have a Sankey Diagram?

Google Sheets lacks ready-made Sankey Diagrams.

We’re not advising you to do away with Google Sheets in favor of other expensive tools.

And this is because there’s an add-on you can easily install in Google Sheets to access insightful, ready-made, and easy-to-customize Sankey Diagrams.

The tool is called ChartExpo.

When should you not use the Sankey Diagram?

Avoid using Sankey Diagrams if you have a smaller data sample. And this is because you won’t get accurate and reliable insights. Secondly, your data should have more than three attributes for a Sankey Chart to display insights easily and conveniently without clutter or distortion.

Wrap Up

A Sankey Diagram says more than a thousand Pie Charts. You can use the chart to visualize data with flow-like attributes.

The chart is best-suited for visualizing data with flow-like characteristics, like energy and cost breakdowns.

Why?

This data type is complex and bulky. Besides, it can easily overwhelm you, particularly if you lack a suitable chart for the job.

You’ll be scratching the surface if you use ill-suited visualization designs to show insights into the flow data type.

We recommend you try a Sankey Diagram because it will save you time immensely. Additionally, the visualization design is amazingly simple to read and interpret.