Representing graphs more meaningfully: A Dashboard Trick

 - Contributed by Gunjan Aggarwal

A layman who would look at the above graph, at his first glance would tell that the Paid Search had not performed well in the initial months, or HE/SHE would think that there must be some changes happened in the Paid Search Section in the month of June which in turn shows hike from July onwards
Through this trend in first glance you will say that Paid Search didn’t yield any visitor in the month of April, May and June. But the fact is Paid Search Campaign started in July.
Now how to show trend line starting from July onwards is a trick.
Goto your Data Source

In the Paid Search Section Replace the “0” for which the data is not available with the formula “=NA()”.

By making a minor change in the data source the Graph can be depicted in more meaningful manner as shown below:

A person looking at the above graph would understand that the Paid Search has started from July onwards.

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