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Understanding the hierarchies among key variables is a step closer to getting actionable insights into your data.
We can easily decode hierarchies. And this is because, throughout our history, we’ve lived in a society characterized by the hierarchy in power and stratification of people into socioeconomic classes. The best-suited chart for displaying the ranked order of key data points is the Sunburst Visualization Chart.
More so, the graph is amazingly easy to interpret, even for non-technical audiences (or readers).
Google Sheets is the go-to visualization tool, especially among professionals and business owners. However, the tool comes with pretty basic Sunburst Charts that need extra effort and time to edit.
You have a viable option of installing a particular add-on to access ready-made and visually appealing Sunburst Visualization Charts.
In this blog, you’ll learn:
Before we delve right into the how-to guide, let’s describe the chart.
Definition: Sunburst Visualization (also known as the Ring Chart or Radial Treemap), displays hierarchy in your raw data. The aforementioned chart displays hierarchy insights through a series of concentric rings. Each ring in the chart corresponds to a level in the hierarchy.
Besides, each ring in the Sunburst Visualization Chart is segmented proportionally to represent its constituent details. Focusing on a segment in the ring gives a sense of the part-to-whole relationship of a data point with respect to its parent ring segment.
Both Sunburst and Treemaps Charts are ideal for uncovering hierarchical insights in your data.
However, the Sunburst Chart is most effective at showing how one ring is broken into its contributing pieces. On the other hand, a Treemap chart is ideal for comparing the relative sizes of the key metrics in your data.
This easy-to-interpret chart uses a radial layout to create an immersive visualization experience, especially among your target audiences (and readers).
Another key difference is that this space-filling visualization uses a radial, rather than a rectangular layout (like a Treemap). And this underscores its significance, especially if your goal is to extract sequential insights from raw data.
To enjoy the immersive visualization experience brought about by this chart, you need to go beyond the basic charts provided by Google Sheets.
We suggest you give a Sunburst Chart Generator we’ll talk about in the coming sections.
As we said, Sunburst Data Visualization is ideal for displaying hierarchical data.
The visualization design is made up of an inner circle surrounded by rings of deeper hierarchy levels. The angle of each segment is either proportional to a value or divided equally under its parent node.
You have an option of assigning different colors to segments in the Sunburst Visualization according to their respective categories or hierarchy levels.
Let’s dig deeper into the components of the chart.
Google Sheets is a trusted data visualization tool because it’s familiar and has been there for decades.
But this spreadsheet application should not be your go-to Sunburst Visualization Chart maker, especially if you want to display insights hierarchically.
Google Sheets produces pretty basic charts that can further consume massive amounts of effort and time in editing.
We’re not advocating you ditch Google Sheets in favor of other pricey tools. There’s a Sunburst Chart maker that comes as an add-on you can install in your Google Sheets to access the advanced chart library.
It’s no doubt there’re thousands of add-ons for Google Sheets. The add-on we’ve tested and that has provided remarkable results is ChartExpo.
ChartExpo is a Sunburst generator that thousands of professionals and business owners across the world use to access ready-made, insightful and easy-to-understand visualizations.
It comes as an add-on you can easily install in your Google Sheets to access ready-to-use Sunburst Visualization Charts for your data stories. ChartExpo comes loaded with many advanced charts in its library.
In the next section, we’ll use Sunburst Charts in ChartExpo to visualize data for insights.
You don’t want to miss this.
In this example, we’ll use Sunburst Visualization Charts to display insights into the table below.
| Analysis | Months | Name | Attendance |
| Attendance | June | Paul | 75 |
| Attendance | June | Clark | 67 |
| Attendance | June | Alan | 90 |
| Attendance | July | Paul | 75 |
| Attendance | July | Clark | 67 |
| Attendance | July | Alan | 90 |
| Attendance | March | Paul | 67 |
| Attendance | March | Clark | 90 |
| Attendance | March | Alan | 75 |
| Attendance | May | Paul | 67 |
| Attendance | May | Clark | 90 |
| Attendance | May | Alan | 75 |
The Sunburst Visualization is best-suited, especially when working with large amounts of data.
The visualization design can help you uncover hidden insights that would otherwise be difficult to see if you use other charts.
The Sunburst Chart comes as a circle, with nodes and subnodes. Each node in the chart is displayed as an arc sized and colored to align with your key data points.
You have unlimited freedom to specify the number of levels to display simultaneously in a Sunburst Data Visualization Chart.
The Sunburst Chart is also known as:
You can use the visualization design to display hierarchical data structures. Furthermore, it’s made up of an inner circle surrounded by deeper hierarchy levels’ rings.
All segments in Sunburst Charts may be colored based on categories or hierarchy levels in data.
Use a Sunburst Chart to:
Sunburst and Sankey Charts are interactive charts.
Why?
They both offer easy-to-interpret graphical representations of the path an online user takes before converting into a customer. The outcome desired in a sales funnel may be monetary-based (purchases) or non-monetary-based, like pages browsed.
Sunburst and Sankey charts display insights into raw data differently. Some situations are a better fit for Sankey diagrams, others for Sunburst Charts. However, choosing between Sunburst and Sankey diagrams trickles down to personal preference.
Yes, you read that right.
Sunburst has a clear advantage over the Sankey Chart in displaying the user journey in a sale funnel. And this is because the graph has more space for displaying insights.
Sankey diagram generator is best-suited in situations where you’re tracking metrics at each stage of a funnel.
With increased focus on user experience (UX) in recent years, many companies are on the hunt for tools to ease the detection and display of risks and opportunities.
In other words, they want to outdo their competition by offering seamless user journeys in their funnels.
Sunburst Charts are highly recommended in visualizing hierarchical relationships in your raw data. You can use the visualization design to display customers’ journeys across a site or mobile app in a radial layout.
This chart can show you the point of origin (where customers begin their journey), which is the center of the hierarchy. The other additional rings or circles depict the stages of a funnel based on the awareness, interest, desire, and action (AIDA) model.
Let’s examine the advantages of Sunburst Visualization.
At a glance, you can easily display the common journeys and the order of pages or app views that were visited by online users using the chart.
The Sunburst Visualization allows you to create filters on specific journey segments. You can easily display the number of online users at each stage of your funnel.
You can use a interactive sunburst chart to reverse-engineer the movement of online users in a funnel until they convert into buying and return customers. This allows you to see the pathway customers take to a specific page.
A Sunburst Visualization Chart consists of an inner circle surrounded by rings ranked in levels. You can use this chart to display hierarchical insights into your data.
Each level of the hierarchy in a Sunburst Diagram is represented by one ring or circle with the innermost circle as the highest point of the hierarchy.
A Sunburst Graph is made up of an inner circle surrounded by outer rings. Each segment in the chart is either proportional to a value or divided equally under its parent node.
You can assign different colors to segments in the Sunburst Chart to highlight hierarchies or comparisons of key data points. Each row in a Sunburst Chart represents the path from the root node to a leaf node.
As we said, understanding the hierarchies among key variables is a step closer to getting actionable insights into your data.
Our brains can easily recognize hierarchies. We’re conditioned to assume that anything on top of the hierarchy has more significant value than the one on the bottom.
The best-suited chart for displaying the ranked order of key data points is the Sunburst Visualization Chart. Why?
The graph is amazingly easy to interpret, even for non-technical audiences (or readers).
Google Sheets is the go-to visualization tool, especially among professionals and business owners. However, the tool comes with pretty basic and interactive Sunburst Charts that need extra effort to edit.
We recommend you install a third-party application called ChartExpo to access ready-made and advanced charts. ChartExpo is an application you can easily download and install in your Google Sheets spreadsheet.
ChartExpo’s extensive library has a ready-made Sunburst Chart, plus over 50 more advanced visualization designs. You don’t need coding skills to visualize your data using the Sunburst Visualization generator.
Sign up for a 7-day free trial today to access ready-to-use and easy-to-interpret Sunburst Charts.
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