The maps visualisation will make it easy to analyse your customers data by using heatmaps and markers to identify key areas for your business.
You can use maps to tell a story about your client's retail stores or optimise your client's travel routes, you can find the most popular location for your product or identify a new market.
Maps help you visualise your geographical data in a bright and interesting way - here's how to use it:
Shape of the data
Post Codes
You can use the maps visualisation if your data is split by a full UK Post Code. Importantly, this dimension needs to be named 'PostCode' in the report engine in order for this to become available in the dashboards.
City Names
You can use maps visualisation if your data is split by a recognised UK City. Importantly, this dimension needs to be names 'City' in the report engine in oder for this to become available in the dashboards.
Visualisation options
As a default, the data will be displayed as a 2D 'dark style' map with an accompanying table which shows your data by either postcode or city/region. These options are all configurable in the visualisation panel.
Skip Heatmap
This removes the postcode/region heatmap beneath the markers on the map so you can see the pins more clearly.
Skip Table
This option removes the default table that is generated when you first create a map report so that the map expands to the whole report view.
Skip Markers
This removes the pins from the map so that you can see the region map more clearly.
Force 2D
This is selected by default, if you untick this option the map will become a 3D render of your data.
Map Style
Dark
This displays your map on a black background.
Light
This displays your map on a light background.
Streets
This displays your map on a coloured map which also displays major roads.
Pins Mode
By default pins are markers of your dimension values (postcodes/cities) plotted on the map.
Selecting 'bubble' changes the diameter of the pins to represent the data point as scaled against other data points. This means that a larger bubble represents a dimension value that has a higher metric value e.g. if London saw 130 sales over the month of August compared to Birmingam who only saw 30 sales, the 'bubble' for London would be much larger.
Heatmap Aggregation
If your geo data is in PostCode form you can choose whether to show your heatmap region as an aggregation of the PostCode areas (this is the beginning two characters of your post code e.g. AB is Aberdeen) or you can choose to show this as UK regions (e.g. South West, East England, East Midlands etc.)
PostCode Region
Please note that this visualisation option is unavailable if your geo data is broken down by City - the default heatmap aggregation for this will be Regions.
Heatmap and Pin Colours
You can alter the default colours for heatmap and pin colours using our colour picker feature in the visualisation panel.
Comparison Colouring
You can also use our period comparison function to compare your geographical data against another point in time. This will display your data points in red/yellow/green depending on whether your metric has increased or decreased compared to your comparison date range.
You can choose to only show this on your pins:
Or only on your Regions:
Or both:
Map Interactions
Pins
You can click on any pin on the map to display a tooltip showing extra detail about the data point.
Regions
When you click on a region in the map the data is filtered to the specific pins in the region. Similarly, if the table view is selected the table will only show values relevant to the region selected.
To return to a full view simply click on the 'Reset Map' button that appears in the top left corner of the map.
Zoom
You can zoom in and out of the graphs to inspect the data more closely. To do this, click on the '+' and '-' buttons in the bottom right corner to zoom in and out.
