If you have important or surprising information you wish to highlight in your presentation, maybe the worst way you can do it is by using a table.
Before
Problem 1
In order to determine what’s important with a table, you have to read it and be able to make sense of what you’ve read. It’s impossible to glance at a table and immediately understand its significance.
Problem 2
The first row shows a remarkable increase in page views, but it’s not obvious or called out in any way.
Problem 3
The last row in the table shows a marked decrease in page views. Because it’s labeled “no increase” it doesn’t look like that big a deal. The information isn’t expressed as a percentage so it’s hard to compare the performance of website # 4 against the others.
After
Solution 1
Forget the table. To make these data immediately apparent to the most casual observer (a favorite phrase of my 9th-grade geometry teacher), a chart is the best choice.
Solution 2
The color green is associated with words like “go” and “positive,” so I used it for the first column to indicate that a 137% increase in page views is a good thing.
Solution 3
I’ve done two things. First, I calculated the percentage decrease in page views for website #4 (click here to learn how to determine percentage increase or decrease). Using this number, I created column for website #4 and made it red, which has negative connotations.
In conclusion…
Don’t hide important information in tables because that makes your audience work too hard to find it.
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