How to Implement Google Charts for Data Visualization and Insights

After OPTI implemented the Mobile payment standardized platform (see case study here) for one of our partners, the need for a reporting tool that could gather all the data from the database and represent it correctly, emerged.The importance of this task was paramount, because the management wanted to be able to take action in real time, based on the reports that OPTI built. We decided that charts were not only necessary but extremely important for fast and accurate decision making and started looking for an interactive tool that displayed the data correctly, was looking good, was easy to use and stood the test of time. After careful examination, we decided that Google Charts was what we and our partner needed.

Google Charts is a JavaScript-based data visualization library built by Google that is easy to use and has a wide variety of customization options. It provides a rich selection of data visualization types and renders the charts using HTML5 and SVG. With a few lines of code you can build a chart that looks both professional and nice to look on desktop and mobile. The charts can be powered with static data or with data from a database.

The library comes with many different chart types, from the most common ones to the most advanced-style charts. Some of the chart types that come with Google Charts:

1) Column and Bar Chart - is a data visualization where each category is represented by a rectangle, with the height of it being proportional to the values plotted.

2) Pie Chart - it can be used to show percentages of a whole at a set point in time.

3) Scatter Chart - it uses dots to represent the values for two different numeric variables. This chart is used to analyze relationships between variables.

4) Line Chart - is used to track changes of a variable over periods of time

5) Histogram Chart - is similar with Bar Charts but his type plots the distribution of a numeric variable as series of bars, each one representing a class

6) Geo chart - shows a map of a country or region with the values for each location shown in colors.

7) Calendar Chart - shows activity over a specific span of time, such as months or years. They are used to show how quantities vary.

Do you need an analytics dashboard for your business? See our case study here.