Charting data and determining business progress is an important part of measuring success. From recording financial statistics to webpage visitor tracking, finding the best practices for charting your data is vastly important for your company’s success. Here is a look at five charting best practices for optimal data visualization and analysis.

1. Arrange Data in a Clean, Presentable Manner
   
   To optimize your chart’s readability and presentation, it is vital that you present your data in a clean and easy to read format. Avoid putting too much data on your chart, ensure that your variables are labeled clearly and decisively, and organize your data in a strategic format. For instance, you could have your variables organized from smallest to largest if you are comparing sales figures, or if you are monitoring figures over a length of time, make sure that your chart is in chronological order. Presenting a clean and easily read chart will only improve your ability to analyze your data more effectively.


2. Identifying the Right Type of Chart for Your Data
   
   One chart will not meet all of your business needs. It is important to use the chart that will most effectively organize your data and boost your ability to analyze and record data in the future. For example, if you are analyzing revenue totals across a time frame, a line graph may be best for you. Meanwhile, if you are running figures on trends and trying to determine a percentage breakdown for popular opinion a pie chart may be most effective. There are a variety of different charts you can use. To maximize your research’s effectiveness, it is vital that you select the right type of chart.


3. Determine What Vital Information Should Be Captured in Your Chart
   
   Most businesses run many reports that they obtain data from. Although you may have to keep track of a variety of data, it is important to keep your reporting clean and charts highly visual and readable. Determine what vital information belongs on your chart. Organization is key to maintaining clean charts and allowing you to effectively analyze data in the future. Keep only what you need on your chart, you can always create separate ones for different metrics (and you should!). On a similar note, it is important to remove unnecessary data from your chart. Keep it clean and concise to allow users to easily read the data they need, without having to filter or delete fields at a later time.


4. Create Charts with Vibrant Color Coding to Assist in Data Visualization
   
   Creating charts with vibrant colors and bolded fonts allows users to easily and effectively analyze your chart in less time. It has also been proven that vibrant charts and presentations keep the users more engaged than boring, flat data charts and slides. Engage your audience with vivid charts that read easy and are cleanly presented.


5. Keep Your Language Simple
   
   While you may be aiming to impress your audience with impressive statistics and a thorough presentation, it should be said that your chart should include language that is easy to understand. Your chart is no place for adverbs or expressive language. Label your chart clearly and simply, making it easy to read and view.

Ready to launch a new business idea, but want to know what you are getting into first? How can you do this if the business doesn’t officially exist yet?

It’s natural to look at a start-up venture with some trepidation. After all, it takes a significant amount of time and resources to get a business off the ground so that it becomes profitable. Understanding how to grow business and increase revenues is vital in the first year of a new business, especially in an uncertain economy. Whether you are a first time entrepreneur or a serial entrepreneur for many years, there are time-tested steps you’ll need to take to forge a successful business plan and predict your future earnings.

Before you conduct your start-up forecasting, understand these two things:

1. The figures you calculate must be based on factors you know going in. Therefore, things are subject to change.

2. You are not predicting future success, but rather weighing the possibility of risk vs. profits. Keep this in mind and don’t make any concrete promises to investors.

To get started with forecasting and planning for your startup, here are some basic steps. Remember, that you will use this as part of your overall business plan and for staging the launch of your new venture.

• Step 1 – Total Available Market (TAM)

  The total available market refers to the amount of the identified consumer or business market that will be receptive to your offering. You may be looking at a large sector of a specific industry, or a sub-set of a market that your niche product can satisfy an unmet need. Get a picture of who your target market is.

• Step 2 – Served Available Market (SAM)

  The served available market is made up of your targeted market of consumers or business owners who are already getting their needs met by your competitors. You must carefully look at this number and research what they are receiving and where there are unmet needs, if you want to get these prospects away from your competition.

• Step 3 – Gaps in TAM vs. SAM

  This step compares your TAM data with your SAM data, also sometimes referred to as a SWOT analysis. In this exercise, you will begin to identify the prospects who have unmet needs or are not currently using a comparable product or service that you can offer. For many startups, this represents the first customers attained.

• Step 4 – Rate of Adoption

  A startup business can expect that things may take time to ramp up before any real income is generated. On average, the rate of adoption by prospects can take as long as 12 to 18 months. Have a plan in place to keep the business afloat during this time. You could maintain a day job or bring investment partners on board.

• Step 5 – Resources to Launch

  You’ll need many resources in the first year of a startup. Factor in time, materials, staff, and office rental fees you will require to get going. Also, look at administrative costs and marketing resources you’ll require to launch.

• Step 6 – First Year Sales Generated

  Now that you have the first 5 steps completed of your forecasting plan, you’ll be ready to start reaching out to your prospects in a concentrated sales effort. Determine how you will sell to your targeted market, and how many you will contact in the first 12 months of being an entrepreneur.

Your success can only be measured by how well you plan and forecast your business to the world. With hard work and support from a growing community of startups, you’ll find a small business to be very rewarding in many ways.

For more info, please visit Starter Financial Model

The easiest part of starting a new business is choosing a name. Even though it may take weeks to find the right name, a good name does not automatically open the doors to unlimited funding and instant success. In order to open those funding doors while piquing the interest of potential investors a visual aid is necessary; this is where a financial model comes in. A financial model for a start-up consists of best and worst case financial statements for a start-up’s future. Yes, financial modeling can seem a bit intimidating and overwhelming, but it is essential to securing needed funding.

It is important that you understand the nature of the business you are embarking upon along with all of the variables inherent to the business in order to build credibility with potential investors. It is even more important that you convey that knowledge and understanding in a cohesive and intelligent manner; a good financial model demonstrates your comprehension of the intended venture.

Step One: Traffic vs. Conversion

The first step in developing your financial analysis is determining the expected amount of traffic and how much of that traffic will convert into customers. There are two ways to do this: the top-down approach and the bottoms-up approach.

The top-down approach takes into consideration targeted variables to reach a likely conversion rate. For example, you are selling children’s clothing in an area consisting of 3 million households. A baseline assumption would estimate that each household consists of one child and that one of every three households will make a purchase within a prescribed time frame, say three months. Factor in additional filters such as competition, market share, etc. This is how you determine traffic; the number of customers expected to visit your business. The next step is to convert that number into expected sales. Since not everyone who visits your business will purchase something you will need to estimate the percentage using industry standards. In the case of the clothing store, it is safe assumption that 0.5% of the traffic will convert into sales.

In essence, the top down approach is based on the assumption that your business can expect to gain a certain market share in year one, and will continue to grow in subsequent years.

The bottoms-up approach takes into consideration how much money is necessary to meet your goals and costs by focusing on actual sales forecasts (potential sales X average transaction value). For instance, a restaurant that has a base operating cost of $5000 per day needs to sell 100 meals at a rate of $50 per meal to cover that day’s operating costs. This is also known as the break-even level: the point where the daily revenue results in zero net profit. Any revenue made beyond this point would be considered profit for the day.

Since it is preferable to be as realistic as possible when developing a financial model, the bottoms-up approach is a better option because is based on fewer assumptions than the top-down approach.

Step Two: Ticket to Sales Conversion

The next step is to establish how you are going to enable conversion and determining the size of ticket sales. Ticket size is the amount generated per average transaction. When the conversion rate is applied to ticket size the resulting number is the sales revenue.

To arrive at a net profit margin, you need to match costs per transaction with ticket size, both fixed and variable. To find the cost, break down the product into individual components. What materials are required to make a single item? What are the materials cost? Determine the points from manufacturing to sales and assign each point a value to cover costs and profit margin.

Investors look for the most realistic probability, so the greater degree of realism in your financial plan the more sincere you appear. Remember to set benchmarks that are achievable in the economy ats the time and are consistent with market and industry trends.

Step Three: Tell a Story

All of the financial analysis in the world will not tell the story of your business. An investor can look at the financials and see a certain degree of potential for a start-up but they do not see the vision that you have. Fill in the blanks. Tell potential investors what makes your concept different from others. Explain to them the hook that will draw customers to your doorstep and then show them how you intend to keep customers coming back. Infuse potential investors with your vision and help them understand that you are dedicated to the success of your idea.

For more info, please visit Starter Financial Model