July 9th, 2024
5 Best Data Visualization Tools to Use in 2024
By Josephine Santos · 11 min read
The world has become more data-oriented than ever before. With some estimates suggesting that roughly 90% of the world’s data was created in the past two years, you need to leverage up-to-date information to guide your business decisions and create growth opportunities.
However, with so much available information, it would take humans a significant amount of time to extract what’s useful from piles of data and present it in a way that you can understand.
That’s exactly what data visualization tools provide. And luckily, there’s no shortage of options that can work their magic for you.
What Are Data Visualization Tools & Why Should You Use Them?
Data visualization tools provide data scientists (and the everyday user) with a more straightforward platform to present large amounts of raw data. This can greatly streamline data analytics, automating the process of extracting useful information from thousands of possibly relevant data points and ultimately helping experts visualize data so it’s more “digestible.”
These tools can become pillars of a company’s marketing and decision-making efforts. They can help you design useful presentations and even perform meaningful predictive analytics without additional human input. If there’s a structure or process in your company’s pipeline that benefits from near-immediate access to information, data visualization software is there to help.
Example bar chart depicting website traffic by source of traffic. Created with Julius AI
What Do the Best Tools Have in Common?
Due to the reliance on information, data science is a rapidly evolving field. This has led to an incredibly diverse range of software solutions. But how do you separate the good data management tools from the chaff? There are a few most common characteristics that the best options on the market provide.
Ease of Use
The first is ease of use. At their core, these tools are meant to help expert data scientists, but companies without a dedicated data analyst role should also be able to get meaningful insight from them. That’s why some of the most popular solutions on the market have in-depth tutorials and learning bases, benefiting both the regular user and the pro.
One of the biggest improvements in this area has been the adoption of AI and large language model learning solutions. These tools can modify your inputs on the go and determine what results you need, even if you can’t precisely describe them.
Large Data Management
The second characteristic is the ability to handle larger data loads. Even if it might not seem like it, your company is likely capable of producing an incredible amount of data. If the tool can’t create meaningful connections between them, it might not rank among the “best of the best.”
Adaptability
Thirdly, adaptability is the name of the game in modern online-first businesses, and the same should go for your data-handling tool. Software that can use different data visualization techniques and create diverse outputs is likely going to be among your top picks.
Cost
Finally, there’s the cost factor. Of course, a higher price tag usually means that the tool has higher quality or more features. However, a small business might not need all the bells and whistles.
Therefore, a smaller, more curated tool can provide just the right number of benefits for visualizing data while not straining the budget.
A Look At the Best Data Visualization Tools
Here are some of the best data visualization tools individuals and organizations should be aware of:
1. Julius AI
2. Microsoft Excel + Power BI
3. Tableau
4. Google Charts
5. Zoho Analytics
Julius AI
Julius AI is an AI-powered data processing, analysis, and visualization software. It’s a chat-based system, where you provide instructions to the AI in the form of natural questions, and the tool returns valuable and interactive visualizations of the information in your datasets. It can process various databases and file uploads, allowing you to craft personalized data banks and deliver a “self-service” system where you don’t have to program extensive analysis algorithms to get insightful results.
Julius AI can create simple yet powerful charts for every purpose, whether it’s in the marketing, economics, or healthcare industry. Additionally, its natural language processing can be an asset in academia and business leadership, allowing you to solve scientific problems and create code that improves your productivity.
Microsoft Excel + Power BI
Strictly speaking, Excel is a spreadsheet manipulation software, not a dedicated data visualization tool. However, considering the longevity of Office as one of the staple enterprise solutions, it’s no surprise that it can be an excellent starting point when you need insights from extensive data. Excel can create bar graphs, pie charts, scatter plots, and many other data visualization formats, and most companies will usually have ready access to it.
If you want to go a step further, Microsoft’s Power BI is a natural extension of Excel that fully focuses on data analytics and visualization methods. Power BI utilizes Microsoft’s Copilot to provide you with natural language processing capabilities to guide you through the platform’s options.
Tableau
Tableau ranks among the most intuitive solutions available, providing you with extensive options for connecting databases and information sources and converting them into useful charts, sheets, and maps. Apart from its data visualization capabilities, Tableau offers CRM tools, allowing you to combine your data and put it to work immediately to develop customer-friendly processes.
While Tableau is intuitive, it takes a bit of a learning curve to fully master the tool’s capabilities. Additionally, the tool’s sheer power and focus on delivering business-friendly insights is balanced out by its relatively high cost.
Google Charts
If you need a budget-friendly tool to create data visualizations for websites to improve your platform’s interactivity, relevance, and authority, then Google Charts might be one of the best free options out there. It’s a fully browser-based solution that uses fairly simple processes to deliver various charts, maps, and tables that can be fully integrated into your website.
This free data visualization tool can receive data from some of the most common enterprise database solutions, such as Salesforce, Excel, Google Sheets, and even from custom SQL datasets.
Zoho Analytics
Designed specifically for business intelligence, Zoho Analytics (or Zoho Reports) is one of the most commonly used data visualization tools for marketing and profit-oriented information. It allows company management to quickly overview campaign performance through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, email scheduling, and report-sharing capabilities.
Additionally, Zoho Analytics readily integrates with other Zoho solutions, allowing you to manage the entire business within the ecosystem.
How to Choose the Best Tool for Your Business or Personal Use
Choosing the best data visualization tool often boils down to knowing what data you have and how you need to utilize it. Somewhat paradoxically, this can take a bit more time. Each software has its own way of manipulating your data, and getting it to provide a curated result precisely according to your needs might be beyond its capabilities.
Fortunately, the best data visualization tools often come with free plans or extensive trial offers that allow you a sample of what you can get by leveraging them. Focus on the four hallmarks of success for tools (versatility, scalability, approachability, and budget-friendliness). You can even create a dataset of results you obtain from various tool trials and use a tool to determine which one is the best fit for you.
Make Data Straightforward and Easy with Julius AI
The best time to start getting more insights from your data is today. And for that, you don’t have to learn advanced coding techniques or step-by-step procedures on how to properly format and conceptualize your data.
With Julius AI, you can let artificial intelligence take over. Just input your dataset and how you’d like it to be processed and visualized and get the answers you were looking for all along.
Start with Julius AI today for free and revolutionize how you look at the world around you through smart data processing.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are the 3 C's of data visualization?
The 3 C’s of data visualization are clarity, context, and consistency. Clarity ensures your visuals are easy to interpret, context helps viewers understand the story behind the data, and consistency maintains uniform design elements to avoid confusion and enhance comprehension.
What are the 7 steps of data visualization?
The seven steps of data visualization include defining your purpose, collecting data, cleaning and organizing the data, choosing the right visualization type, designing the visualization, interpreting the results, and sharing the insights. Each step ensures that the data story is compelling, accurate, and actionable for your audience.
How to learn data visualization?
You can learn data visualization by starting with online tutorials and courses that cover the basics of design principles and tools like Tableau, Power BI, or Excel. Practicing with real-world datasets and experimenting with different chart types will help you gain hands-on experience, while exploring case studies and expert examples can refine your skills and inspire creativity.
