Tips, Expertise, Articles and Advice from the Pro's for Your Website or Blog to Succeed
Employee turnover is the process of replacing one employee with another.
When someone quits their job, and then someone new is hired to fill that role, that’s turnover. Generally speaking, if companies have lots of turnover, it’s seen as negative because it means employees aren’t happy or there is a management issue.
Low turnover means that employees stay at a company for a long time, while high turnover means that people are being hired, leaving, and then companies have to rehire again often. This can impact profit, morale, and productivity, so it’s something most companies try to avoid.
Because employee turnover impacts things like productivity, meeting goals, communication, and the overall culture, the costs can be very high.
In fact, a study by Work Institute found that it can cost as much as 33% of an employee’s annual salary to replace them. If we factor in the cost of hiring new employees and training them, the disruption to workflows and client work, and the effect it has on other employees and their productivity, this makes sense.
And without a bulletproof training program for new employees, there will ultimately be a learning curve and mistakes made by new hires in the beginning. If one role has lots of turnover, it’s unlikely that detailed and accurate notes are being kept on what the responsibilities are or what targets have been met. This makes it harder for someone to jump in and fill that role without making mistakes.
Plus, advertising for a new position can take time and money, especially if a company uses a paid job board. All these can add up to be very expensive, which is why employee turnover is usually seen as a bad thing and companies try so hard to avoid it.
There are lots of factors that can contribute to an employee leaving a company.
If the turnover is fast, and people are leaving within a few months, more often than not, company culture is to blame. In a report by Jobvite, 28% of people who left within 90 days cited culture as the reason.
Employees will also leave if they don’t feel the compensation is high enough or they don’t feel valued. They might leave because they are under too much stress, feel unsupported, or they simply don’t like the job.
They might also leave if they find somewhere better. If they’re offered a job with a better salary, a better role, or even a better benefits package, employees will leave because they have more to gain by moving somewhere else.
Another big reason many employees leave is when they feel disengaged or lost. When employees don’t get any sort of training or personal development or aren’t offered any kind of promotion and growth at the company, they can feel burned out and unappreciated, pushing them to move to a company that values them more.
There are lots of reasons why turnover happens, but it usually comes down to employees not feeling valued and not getting what they want from a role.
Avoiding employee turnover is the best way to lower costs.
Making employees feel valued, engaged, and giving them room to grow at a company are cheap, easy ways to build a better culture and encourage them to stay.
Making sure that benefit packages are attractive and that employees are fairly compensated will go a long way in convincing people not to leave. One-to-one meetings, and career development, will also help employees feel more engaged and less burnt out at work.
Regular check-ins and feedback sessions are also essential for reducing employee turnover. These sessions give employees a chance to share where they are struggling and how management can support them before they get to the point of leaving.
And creating a positive work culture where people are celebrated for their achievements and everyone is treated with respect is essential to making employees want to stay. This can be achieved by using employee feedback software, like Grow, to highlight employee success and achievements and make them feel valued.
Although reducing turnover itself is the best way to reduce the cost of turnover, there are three strategies you can put in place to limit the costs should the worst happen.
Here’s what you should consider doing to minimize the costs of hiring new employees:
One of the biggest costs associated with employee turnover is the cost of having to retrain employees every few months.
But having a detailed note-taking system that keeps all workplace systems, processes, and goals outlined will make it much easier for new employees to catch up and reduce how much time other team members have to spend training them.
The more detailed the onboarding systems and the more prepared your new hires are for their roles, the easier it will be to avoid costly mistakes or losing clients with each transition.
Having a good employee support system will help you to stop turnover and reduce dissatisfaction, but it will also help you support new hires and team members when they feel morale is low.
It’s likely that some team members will have to take on extra work when one person leaves and new hires are coming in, so making sure that there is an open line of communication is essential to avoid overwhelm or burnout.
Having a safe space where employees can share any problems they need help with, and get support from management, will minimize mistakes made when new hires join and help you reduce turnover in the future.
Obviously, you do need to check your state requirements for work laws and contracts, but try and make sure that the notice period for an employee to resign gives you enough time to find someone new. Most jobs require between two weeks to a month, and if you make this clear in your contract, you can put a system in place for hiring that reflects the resignation period.
Strategies for reducing employee turnover need to be ongoing, but this can get overwhelming without some kind of automation software.
Luckily, there are some great tools to help you keep employees engaged, make them feel supported, and give them ways to share any struggles they are facing. Here are our top recommendations:
Grow is a continuous feedback tool designed to give feedback, get feedback from employees and recognize and celebrate achievements. It gives users templates and suggestions they can give to each other, so it makes giving positive feedback fast and easy to implement into a daily routine.
This makes it a lot easier for busy managers to find time to celebrate their teams and to make sure they know they are valued. It also makes it easier for managers to track and receive feedback from employees, and it brings employees together in a culture of positive feedback. You can add Grow to Slack for free here.
Blueboard is an employee recognition tool that lets you celebrate employee wins and reward them with different experiences and gifts. It’s a great way to make employees feel really valued and helps them associate work with more than just stressful experiences. You can book a free demo here.
The Predictive Index is a method of analyzing and understanding employees based on their personalities and behaviors. This makes it easier for teams to communicate effectively, and for managers to understand how they can best support individual employees.
It also makes it a lot easier for managers to hire new people because the Predictive Index can help them predict who will fit well into the current teams and who is more likely to cause friction. You can try a demo for free here.
Although using tools to help you improve overall retention and avoid employee turnover is the best way to reduce costs, there are some tools that can help make the transition between hiring new employees easier and reduce the cost of lost business or training.
Here are our top picks for the best tools to help you minimize the costs of employee turnover:
Arya by Leoforce makes it easier to find, and hire, new employees. It uses AI technology to assess over 300 separate factors when recommending employees and is also able to overcome unconscious biases and help managers build more diverse teams.
Wisnio is a tool that helps recruiters and managers use psychological tests and scores to hire the best people for jobs that fit both in the role and within the rest of the team. These tools help focus hiring decisions more on how someone will fit into a company’s culture than how qualified they are on paper for a role.
It uses tools like competency mapping and value alignment to reduce friction amongst employees and managers and create teams that not only work well together but also communicate more naturally and that enjoy collaborating on goals. You can get started with a free trial here.
HireVue is an app that helps automate the hiring process and acts as a virtual assistant to hiring managers. This can make the process up to four times faster and help reduce how much time it takes to fill a role when someone leaves.
It helps to reduce the time taken to schedule interviews, vet candidates, and follow up with potential employees. You can try a demo for free here.
The cost of employee turnover is inevitable, but it can be managed by having good strategies in place. At the end of the day, the best way to cut costs is to reduce turnover altogether. No company should be seeing a high level of turnover, and if they are, it’s time to make some serious changes to how they manage and support employees.
By reducing employee turnover, companies become more productive, efficient, effective, and profitable. If you want to start supporting employees better to reduce future turnover, you might want to consider adding perks at the office or setting up better onboarding processes to make new hires feel more welcome.
This article is meant to be a starting point for sharing observations, experiences, and ideas to begin and build a conversation, exchange experiences, discuss, and shape a product vision we can work towards as a community.
Our initial product vision and definition reads as follows:
ChatGPT is a Large Language Model (LLM) built for conversation. It is a successor to InstructGPT. Both these models are built by OpenAI. I won't waste your time with another article about its uses or examples of how it performs.
These models are chatbots (the ability to converse with humans and maintain a dialogue), which are active areas of Natural Language Processing (NLP) research. There have been quite a few notable attempts (Tay from Microsoft, for example) which failed spectacularly after being left to train with open data from Twitter.
I have a programming code problem, I need help to solve the problem.
How to explode data array using MYSQL and using NOT IN.
The program code is below
<form style="overflow: hidden;" method="post">
<div class="table-responsive">
<?php
$sql = "SELECT * FROM kursus WHERE KodKursus NOT IN
(SELECT kursusList FROM pensyarahkursus WHERE IDUser= '$value');";
$stmt = $db->query($sql);
$i = 1;
if ($stmt->rowCount() > 0) { ?>
<table class="table table-hover table-bordered table-striped" id="dataTable" width="100%" cellspacing="0">
<thead>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10px;"></td>
<th style="width: 20px;">#</th>
<td>Semester</td>
<td>Kod Kursus</td>
<td>Nama Kursus</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<?php
while ($row = $stmt->fetch()) {
echo "<tr>"; ?>
<td>
<input type="checkbox" aria-label="Checkbox for following text input" name="kursus[]" value="<?php echo $row['IDKursus']; ?>">
</td>
<th><?php echo $i ?></th>
<td><?php echo $row['Semester']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $row['KodKursus']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $row['NamaKursus']; ?></td>
<?php
echo "</tr>";
$i++; } ?>
</tbody>
</table>
<?php
} else {
echo "<br>";
echo "<center><h4> Tiada Rekod</h4></center>";
} ?>
</div>
<div class="d-flex justify-content-between mt-3">
<button type="submit" class="btn btn-success" name="daftar_kursus">Daftar Kursus</button>
<button type="reset" class="btn btn-primary">Reset</button>
</div>
</div>
</form>Picture below sample data pensyarahKursus
Picture bewlow sample data from kursus
Work shifts help employers organize employee schedules. They also enable employees to plan their days, weeks, months, and even years according to their work schedule. Shift schedules also help make sure everyone on the team works a fair amount of hours and gets time to rest between each work period. So what are the different types of work shifts? This guide will explore the basics.
A work shift is a block of time during which an employee works at their job. Shifts are defined by the hours they run and typically fall into one of the following four slots within a 24-hour day:
Now that we’ve covered work shifts according to the time of day, let’s zoom out and explore what the types of work shifts can look like over the days, weeks, and months of a work year.
When an employee works the same hours every day for the same amount of days each week, it’s known as a fixed shift. It doesn’t change from week to week or month to month. A dental office might be open Monday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm, for example, giving the dentists, hygienists, and receptionists in the office a predictable fixed schedule.
Aside from holidays, vacation days, and sick leave, the schedule stays the same.
Fixed shifts are especially beneficial for parents because they take place during typical daycare and school hours, minimizing the need to scramble for childcare at odd hours of the day.
When a company needs employees on the clock for 24 hours of the day, seven days a week, rotating shifts help ensure everyone gets the chance to work the “good” and “bad” shifts.
For example, a 24-hour grocery store might divide its employees into three groups. For two weeks, one group will work the first shift, one will work the second, and one will work the third.
After two weeks, everyone rotates, which helps prevent employees from getting stuck with the most difficult shifts for weeks or months. However, changing shifts often can disrupt a person’s sleep schedule, family life, and leisure time.
Tools like QuickBooks Time can help employers and employees keep track of complicated rotating shift schedules.
Also called the Pitman shift schedule, a 2-3-2 takes place over 14 days. It might look something like this:
The 2-3-2 shift is often used when 24/7 service is required, such as at a hospital or call center. While it requires lengthy shifts, a 2-3-2 shift allows each of four rotating teams to get one long weekend off every other week.
Physicians, plumbers, journalists, and IT technicians all have one thing in common: they’re probably well acquainted with on-call shift work. Being on call means that you’re ready to work the moment your employer calls you in—no matter the time of day or night.
Sometimes, you can go home and spend time with your family while you’re on call. But you’ll need to be able to drop everything and get to work at a moment’s notice. In this type of on-call shift work, you’ll likely only get paid for any time you actually end up working during the shift.
In other situations, you might need to stay at or near your workplace while you’re on call. This should qualify you for on-call pay during the entire time you are in the required area.
On-call shifts help fill the gaps in unpredictable professions. You never know when a patient will experience an emergency, a crucial news story will break, or a pipe will burst. On-call shift workers provide urgent assistance outside of office hours—and this work can pay well.
A four-on, four-off shift means putting in a full week’s worth of work into four day or night shifts—and then taking the next four days off to rest and recover. This type of shift work provides somewhat of a predictable schedule but with the benefit of a longer amount of time off.
And there are plenty of variations, such as three on/three off or five on/five off. As an employee, you know your limits. If you know that you’d have a difficult time working five grueling days or shifts in a row with no time to rest, you might want to stay away—no matter how enticing the idea of five consecutive days off may be.
Employers should also be thinking about this. Before creating four on, four off-type work shifts, employers must consider the type of work the employees must do.
For example, can a physician really give appropriate mental, emotional, and physical energy to patients for five straight shifts—or five long, 12-hour days—in a row? Maybe, but it might not be the best idea.
Developed by—you guessed it—the manufacturing giant, DuPont, these shifts were created in the 1950s to give employees longer stretches of rest after working in DuPont factories for hours on end. Designed to keep a portion of the company’s employees on the clock at all times, the DuPont work shift is 12 hours long.
With a DuPont schedule, four teams rotate through this 28-day cycle:
Each rotating team gets a week of chill time every 28 days, which can be a huge plus. But on the other hand, the longest work week is a grueling 72 hours.
Due to the 24/7 nature of hospital life, nurses are known for shorter workweeks and extended workdays. They often work three 12-hour shifts followed by four days off, four 10-hour shifts with three days off, or—particularly in the private practice setting—five eight-hour days with two days off.
Many nurses prefer to work three 12-hour shifts because of the four days they receive to take care of things at home. According to the nursing resource site, Nurse.org, some nurses with children even prefer this intensive schedule over a typical 9 to 5.
However, these shifts can drag on longer than 12 hours, and they take time to recover from—especially if they’re night shifts. But regardless of whether a 12-hour shift takes place during the day or night, working three back-to-back would make anyone bone-weary by the end.
IT departments often utilize night shifts, too—but not because of patients in need of care. When software companies have clients in far-flung time zones, IT departments use night shifts to take care of customers who are awake when everyone in the company’s time zone is asleep.
Companies often utilize different types of work shifts depending on the role. Bakeries and cafés usually employ one or two night bakers to prepare treats for the next day’s customers, for example. But during the daytime, baristas, servers, and dishwashers will cover the first and second shifts.
Burnout is one of the most important things to watch out for when it comes to work shifts. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), work that lands outside of the typical 9 to 5 range can:
Whenever you’re applying for a new position, take a look at the types of shifts you’d be working. It’s incredibly important that the work shift matches your needs and strengths. If you struggle to keep your eyes open past 9 pm, avoid the night shift at all costs.
On the other hand, if you’re a night owl who’s regularly up till 4 am anyway, give night shift work a try.
If you hate working several long days in a row, look for a more standard, 9-to-5 work schedule. But if you love having more than two days off to enjoy your personal life, give those long, consecutive shifts a try.
And remember that it’s okay to realize something you’re doing isn’t working after all. If the night shift is negatively affecting your mental health or personal life, talk to your supervisor about trying a different work shift that works for you, your team, and your employer.
Imagine if the whole world only worked from 9 am to 5 pm on Monday through Friday. Who would take care of technology emergencies? Who would care for patients at night? Who would type up the news stories we all wake up to in the morning?
Shift work can throw you off balance if you’re not ready for it, but you can always find your footing. Or search for a job with a work schedule that suits you better.
When you’re looking for jobs, try looking for the exact type of shift you want to work. You can narrow your job search on Google, for example, and look specifically for night shift work.
The beauty of different types of work shifts is that there’s something for everyone. Whether you want to get a whole week off every month or tap into your night-loving personality and earn extra cash, there’s a work schedule for you.
Of course, no single type of work shift is all pros and no cons. But if you know your limits and preferences, you can get pretty close.
From first shift to third shift and 2-3-2 to DuPont, humans have dreamed up a dozen ways to do the work that keeps the world spinning. The schedules and shifts we’ve discussed can be combined, adjusted, and tweaked in a hundred unique ways.
Take advantage of employee availability forms to help communicate your ideal work period to potential employers. If you manage both your own business and a team of employees, use employee scheduling software to map out a cohesive work schedule for you and your team.
And remember to rest, relax, and enjoy a favorite pastime on your days off so you can jump back into work with renewed energy—and protect your mental health.
Developing a good workflow can help you be more productive, organized, and efficient in your work. And can also help you keep track of your tasks and responsibilities. Therefore, productivity is essential for a good workflow.
In order to help you work more efficiently, here are some of the most important tools I have listed for you.
Hello,
Below is an example of what is happening to SOME, not all of my letters. I have letters that are all drawing from the same spreadsheet yet sometimes there will be a new line started and sometimes not. There doesn't seem to be a pattern. Has anyone else experienced this?
In addition, if eligible, you will be paid a Mobilization and Demobilization travel allowance not to exceed the current GSA rate per mile capped at $1,250
,for travel to and from site at the start and end of the assignment, subject to satisfactory completion of your assignment.*
Human pose estimation is the process of detecting and estimating the pose of a person in an image or video. It involves detecting the key points or joints of a person's body, such as the head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles, and estimating their positions in the image. This can be done using various computer vision techniques, such as feature detection and machine learning algorithms.
1. Top-down approach
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in software testing shows great promise in ensuring high-quality software without the manual drudgery of endless units and integrated proofing. With AI, delivery times will be reduced from minutes to seconds, and vendors and customers will experience a software renaissance of inexpensive and user-friendly computer applications. Unfortunately, the luxury of inexpensive storage space, blazing fast processing rates, readily available AI training sets, and the internet have converged to turn this promise into overblown hype.
Googling "AI in software testing" reveals an assortment of magical solutions promised to potential buyers. Many solutions offer to reduce the manual labor involved in software testing, increase quality, and reduce costs. In addition, vendors promise that their AI solutions will solve software testing problems. The Holy Grail of software testing — the magical thinking goes — is to take human beings, with their mistakes and oversights, out of the software development loop and make the testing cycle shorter, more effective, and less cumbersome. The question is - should that be the main focus, and is it even possible?
Today, I’m extremely excited to share that Duplicator is joining Awesome Motive, and they’re now part of the WPBeginner family of products.
Duplicator is a top-rated WordPress backup and site migration plugin. Over 1,500,000+ smart website owners use Duplicator to make reliable and secure WordPress backups to protect their websites. Along with backups, you can also use Duplicator to easily migrate your website from one host to another within minutes.
Duplicator makes it easy for website owners to protect their websites with reliable and secure cloud backups. You can use it to create manual or scheduled WordPress backups and store them on any cloud service like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, etc.
You can also use Duplicator to easily migrate and restore your website from one hosting provider to another, or even from local server to live.
This is why over 1,500,000 smart website owners and developers use Duplicator to backup or migrate websites while saving time.
What makes Duplicator stand out is that it’s both EASY and POWERFUL.
It comes with all the powerful backup features that you need including complete WordPress files & database backup, scheduled backups, recovery points to allow for quick rollbacks, archive encryption for enhanced security, and integrations with all the popular cloud storage platforms like Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, FTP / SFTP, and any S3 compatible storage service like Wasabi, etc.
When it comes to WordPress site migrations, Duplicator really stands out from competition. It has an easy migration wizard, streamlined installer, custom search & replace, support for larger websites & managed hosting, server-to-server import, ability to migrate WordPress multisite to standalone or vice-versa, shared database support, and more.
For developers and agencies, Duplicator helps eliminate the rework by allowing you to create pre-configured sites that you can quickly set up with just a few clicks. Instead of manually configuring the same themes and plugins over and over, just configure one site and bundle it into a Duplicator package. Install the package to create a pre-configured site on as many locations as you want!
Aside from that, you can brand the installer with your own logo, and it comes with tons of developer hooks for further customization.
Smart developers and agencies use Duplicator as their preferred tool because it’s always reliable and it helps simplify even the large complex website migrations.
Whether you’re a small business owner or developer, I highly recommend adding Duplicator to your WordPress toolkit.
You can also use the free version of Duplicator to get started.
As you know, every year I do a WPBeginner reader survey where I ask for your suggestions on what new tutorials we should write, plugins we should build, new features we should add to our existing plugins, and so on.
For the last several years, the number of requests for us to build a beginner-friendly WordPress backup & migration plugin has been increasing.
So in 2020, I finally decided to reach out to Bob & Cory (co-founders of Duplicator) to see if they would be interested in joining Awesome Motive. The reason why I picked Duplicator was because I have used it numerous times for our various website migrations, and it was always the most reliable solution especially when dealing with complex migrations.
Not to mention we have written about them in numerous WPBeginner tutorials, so you already know that I am a fan of the product.
Well 2020 was a crazy year for everyone, so the timing wasn’t right for an acquisition, but nonetheless we stayed in touch. Fast forward to 2022, we came to an agreement for Duplicator to join WPBeginner family of products.
The two co-founders will not be joining the team as they want to move on to the next chapter of their life, but the entire Duplicator team will be joining us in the journey ahead, and I am very excited to work alongside them to build the features that you have been asking for.
As you know, my goal at Awesome Motive & WPBeginner is to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys. Our software today powers over 21 million websites and helps shape the web for billions worldwide.
I believe that a reliable website backup solution is a critical part of every website because it helps you protect your website in case something goes wrong.
And that’s why I’m really excited to have Duplicator join the AM family.
Note: Want to join our remote team to work on something awesome & make an impact? We’re hiring. Come work alongside me and help shape the future of the web.
Our work is just starting.
We have an extensive list of ideas and feature roadmap from the feedback that you, the WPBeginner audience, have shared with us in the survey.
I’m looking forward to making those ideas come to life.
This is truly going to be a game changer!
Whether you’re a small business owner or a developer, I think you will want to choose Duplicator to protect your website with our reliable secure backups, and easily migrate your website when you’re looking to switch hosts.
If you have suggestions on features you’d like to see in the Duplicator plugin, then please let us know by sending us a message via WPBeginner contact form.
As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner.
WPBeginner and Awesome Motive would not be here without YOU, and I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you.
And I look forward to continuing serving you and the larger WordPress / web ecosystem for years to come.
Yours Truly,
Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner
The post Welcome Duplicator to the WPBeginner Family of Products first appeared on WPBeginner.
A NoSQL database with strong consistency is Cosmos DB. It lacks a schema, enables SQL-like querying, and even contains JavaScript-written stored procedures, triggers, and UDFs (User Defined Functions). It's Microsoft's response to systems like MongoDB, Cassandra, Couchbase, and others. For at least 99 percent of requests, Cosmos DB promises latencies of fewer than ten milliseconds for reads and less than 15 milliseconds for writes. With that level of performance assurance, Cosmos DB is poised to rule the planet.
For Cosmos DB, Microsoft also supportss.NET, Node.js, Java, and a Python SDK. It is fully managed and operates on Azure. All the data is automatically replicated across any number of global regions. It offers several different consistency levels.
Platform engineering is the latest buzzword to gain traction in modern development practices. However, some advocates argue platform engineering spells the end of DevOps as we know it.
The chatter on social media seems like a gaudy marketing strategy attempting to throw elbows and garner attention. But unfortunately, some practitioners are pushing this narrative, too.
hi, I have a Visual Basic program run the memory game. it basically will let the user click on 2 cards, and then they flip, if they're the same, they disappear, if not, they turn back. So my program will look like there are 3 pair of images under the cards, I already code the cards disappear when the user click on. but there is a problem, the hidden image will stay the same each match, so I have an idea that when the 2 cards cover the 2 same images disappear when we click on, the 2 images will disappear too, and of course if not, they turn back. This is the easiest way I can figure out to make the memory game and I don't know how to code to make this. please help this program worth half my score, and im learning in high school so I only use the basic statement like if, case, do while or do until, etc...And im using Visual Basic 2013 if it helps.
React is a popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces, and Python is a powerful programming language that is often used for backend development. This article will explore how to use these technologies to develop modern software applications.
First, let's take a look at React. React is a declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It allows developers to create reusable components that can be easily combined to build complex user interfaces.
Data visualizations are everywhere; from the news to the nutritional info on cereal boxes, we’re constantly being presented with graphical representations of data. Why? Data visualization is a method of communication. Using the right type can help you quickly convey nuanced information to your audience in a visually appealing way. However, the diversity of styles used in both digital and print formats can be overwhelming. In this article, we will break down the most common visualization types to help guide you through selecting the best choice for your specific needs.
Before getting into the content of the article, let’s briefly address language usage. “Graph” and “chart” are often used interchangeably, but specificity is important. In this article, the term “graph” refers to visual representations of data on a Cartesian plane (they often look like a grid and have an x-, y-, and sometimes z-axis). “Chart” is used as a catchall word for visual representations of data. It’s like the relationship between squares (graphs) and rectangles (charts); all graphs are charts, but not all charts are graphs.
With this understanding, we can dive into the considerations involved in selecting a chart type.
How To Choose The Right Chart TypeThere are some questions you should consider when choosing the right data visualization for your purposes, and we’ll dive into each of these in turn:
Each data visualization should have a primary message. Having a clear idea of what you want to communicate and focusing on that will increase the overall quality of your data visualization, and it will help you narrow down chart types based on the complexity of the message and/or the amount of information being communicated.
For instance, sometimes, a simple table is enough to communicate a singular idea. However, if the message is more complex and/or meant to empower or motivate the audience to take action, it is worth thinking about more dynamic chart types. The following example of this guidance is based on a dataset created by Stetson Done on Kaggle.
The pared-down dataset is shown as a table. In one column, there’s a categorical variable (genre) and in the other is a quantitative variable (sales). The categories are sorted by sales rather than alphabetically by genre. This makes it easy to glance at the table and get an idea of what the most popular genres are. As an added bonus, the table takes up relatively little space. If the purpose of the data visualization is to communicate simple information about the popularity of various video game genres from 1980-2020, the table in Figure 1 is a good choice. But what if the information is more complex?
The following chart shows a table created with the same dataset but which shows slightly different information. Instead of eight genres, this table shows five, and instead of the total worldwide sales for each genre, it presents sales figures for two regions: the European Union and North America. The message this table is trying to communicate is twofold: the data speaks to the sales of various video game genres in two regions and presents a comparison of the sales across these two regions.
In this format, comparing sales for a genre between the two regions is very straightforward. However, comparing sales across all genres for each region is more complicated. The result is that the latter part of the message isn’t being communicated as effectively.
By changing the type of data visualization we use, we can effectively communicate more information. The following figure displays the same data and the table but in the form of a grouped bar graph.
The bar graph allows the audience to compare each genre across the two regions and to compare sales of all the genres for each region. Because the bar graph communicates more information than the table in Figure 2, it’s a better choice for this data.
Keep in mind that less is more. When selecting a chart type, try to create a data visualization that’s as simple as possible while effectively communicating your intended message(s) to your audience.
What Is The Purpose Of The Data Visualization?In the field of data visualization, there are four largely accepted categories of data visualization that relate to different purposes:
How are the elements similar or different? This can be among items and/or over time.
Example: Comparing the sales of two different brands of dog food in a single retail location.
Comparison charts include alluvial diagrams, area graphs (stacked), bar graphs (simple, floating, grouped, and stacked), box and whisker plots, bubble graphs, bullet charts, donut charts, gauge charts, line graphs, parallel coordinates, pie charts, proportional area charts, proportional symbol maps, radar charts, radial bar charts, tree maps, Venn diagrams, and word clouds. To learn more about each of these charts, check out the Chart reference guide, one of two resources provided as a companion to this article.
What parts make up the whole? The composition can be static or change over time.
Example: Showing the breakdown of the diet of Pallas cats.
Composition charts include area graphs (stacked), bar graphs (stacked), circle packs, donut charts, network diagrams, pie charts, tree diagrams, and tree maps. To learn more about each of these charts, check out the Chart reference guide.
Where do the values in a data set fall? Are there outliers?
Example: Communicating the distribution of grades within a middle school class, including the average and outliers.
Distribution charts include alluvial diagrams, bar graphs (floating), box and whisker plots, bubble graphs, bullet charts, circle packs, choropleth maps, connecting line maps, histograms, proportional area charts, proportional symbol maps, scatterplots, and word clouds. To learn more about each of these charts, check out the Chart reference guide.
How do the elements relate to each other? Is there a correlation?
Example: Showing how colder temperatures are correlated to fewer ice cream sales.
Relationship charts include alluvial diagrams, bubble graphs, circle packs, connecting line maps, heat maps, histograms, line graphs, network diagrams, parallel coordinates, radar charts, scatterplots, tree diagrams, and venn diagrams. To learn more about each of these charts, check out the Chart reference guide.
Some chart types fall into multiple categories. For instance, tree diagrams can provide information both on what elements make up a category and on the relationships between those elements. A classic example is a site map. Site maps communicate a list of the pages within a site (composition) and the relationships between the pages.
A donut chart is another good example. Figure 5 shows the results of a second-grade class being asked what their favorite animal is.
Not only does Figure 5 give you a complete listing of the favorite animals selected by the class, but it also allows you to compare the popularity of those animals. Thus, it achieves both comparison and composition.
Multi-purpose charts don’t have to be used for multiple purposes, but when you do want a single chart that can do more than one thing, these types of charts can be a good choice. You can learn more about which chart types are multi-purpose, including what types of variables they use in the Data visualizations table, one of two resources provided as a companion to this article (reference Figure 12).
Knowing what the purpose of the data visualization is will help narrow the options down significantly. If you find that you have multiple purposes and/or messages that can’t be communicated in a single multi-purpose chart, consider using multiple charts, especially if your audience is less familiar with data visualizations and may have trouble reading a more complex chart type. For more information on different chart types, including their purpose, when to use each, and an example, refer to the Chart reference guide.
That brings us to the next consideration in choosing a chart type — audience.
Who Is The Audience?Knowing your audience is key to effective communication. For our purposes, knowledge about your audience will be immensely helpful in both selecting the type of data visualization you’ll use as well as deciding various aspects of the design.
When considering your audience, it’s important to think about things like:
This information should help inform your selection of chart type. For instance, some data visualization types are quite complex and should only be used with high-level experts in the field and/or individuals who are very familiar with data visualizations. For more information on which chart should only be used with this type of audience, refer to the “When to use” sections of the reference guide. The following is an example of one set of data communicated with two different chart types.
Both charts communicate the same skill ratings for two individuals across five categories. Figure 6 uses a radar chart. While these can be a good tool to communicate comparative data, many audiences aren’t familiar with this chart type or with the circular format in which they present the data. As such, Figure 6 may be more difficult for many people to read than Figure 7.
Figure 7, on the other hand, uses a grouped bar graph to display the same data. Since grouped bar graphs are familiar to most people regardless of their familiarity with data visualization, it’s more likely to be easier to understand by a larger audience.
If you’re wondering, “Why not always opt for the simpler chart type,” you’re not alone. Simplicity is key, but it should be looked at from the perspective of the bigger picture. Some chart types, while more complicated for a general lay audience to understand, communicate information more successfully for audiences that are familiar with them. This is evident in Figures 6 and 7. While radar charts are likely more difficult for a random person to read, in this case, the radar chart, for someone who can easily read it, does a better job of allowing for a comparison across the two people.
Considering your audience will be important after you’ve selected your chart type as well. For a general audience — not composed of experts — you should use simple, straightforward language and avoid using jargon or technical terminology. Additionally, for general audiences without a lot of background knowledge on the topic of your data, you may want to include more contextual information before introducing the data visualization or provide context and additional information within the visualization.
A stacked area graph is a good example of this. Stacked area graphs are like simple area graphs. The difference is that they show two or more data series stacked on one another. Each data series after the first one starts where the one before it ends. In other words, if point A for data series 1 stops at $18 million, then point A for data series 2 will begin at $18 million.
For this reason, they can be a bit confusing if you’re not familiar with them, and if they aren’t labeled, reading them can require some math. However, the benefit of using them is that they show the values for each series as well as the totals (for each point, the top of the stack is the total). Figures 8 and 9 demonstrate this.
Both Figures 8 and 9 show a stacked area graph with the same data. However, Figure 9 provides additional information by labeling the values for each region for each quarter. This not only eliminates the need for the audience to calculate the figures, but it also helps to illuminate a characteristic of stacked area graphs. Because of the way they’re laid out, it can be difficult to compare the values for the different data series (in this case, regions) at a single point, for instance, Quarter 1. Adding the values to the graph helps with that. However, it’s not always a good idea to label every element in a graph. Doing so with large data sets often results in a graph that’s overcrowded and harder to read (see Figure 10).
By this point, the types of charts still under consideration should have narrowed significantly based on your message, purpose, and audience. Based on your remaining options, it’s now largely a matter of matching up the details of your data set, including the type and number of variables for the remaining options.
What Type And Size Of Data Am I Working With?There are different types of data and variables:
Knowing what type of data you plan to use in your data visualization will help you eliminate some chart types. For instance, if your data consists of a categorical and a quantitative variable, you can’t use a histogram because they show frequency and quantitative variables split into intervals.
Similarly, the size of your data set can help you to eliminate some chart types. Certain data visualization types like bar graphs and pie charts only lend themselves to being used with a small set of data. The reason is that charts should communicate a message in a way that’s easy to understand. A bar graph with eighteen bars or a pie chart with twenty slices is not going to be easy to read. However, there are chart types that can be used with large data sets. Figures 10 and 11 demonstrate this.
Both charts are based on the same data, but when presented as a pie chart, the information takes longer to process than when presented in a table. Because the pie chart has so many slices, it’s not possible to label each one with the movie title, so we have to use a key. This means that the audience will have to keep scanning from right to left over and over again to look from the key to the pie chart. The table, on the other hand, has the number of votes presented beside the movie title, making it easy to understand not only the popularity of the movies but the exact number of votes each one received.
For more information on which charts work with large data sets and other information about over 30 of the most popular chart types, refer to Figure 12.
We’ve covered the most important considerations when choosing a chart type, as well as what to look out for. To learn more about data visualizations, refer to the resources linked at the bottom of the article.
Hopefully, you now feel empowered with the knowledge you need to create a stellar data visualization! If you want to try out some of the tips in the article and don’t have a data set to work with, you can browse sites like Kaggle, World Bank Open Data, and Google Public Data Explorer. As a final reminder, keep it simple and focus on your message — you’ve got this!
You may have an excellent business plan together with a good product or service to sell. But, the look and feel of your digital storefront doesn’t perfectly represent your brand. Then it simply isn’t going to contribute all that much to your business’s success.
That’s what makes WordPress such a vital element when building your website. WordPress’s website building tools and themes can give you what you’re looking for in your quest to achieve a seamless user experience.
There’s certainly no shortage of good WordPress themes out there. Themes that offer layouts for blogs, portfolios, an online store or a digital presence for a business.
Finding a top-quality WordPress theme can be a challenge. The following selection of 12 top WordPress themes for 2023 should make it easy for you to find one that best fits your needs.
BeTheme is a supremely popular (250,000+ customers) multipurpose WordPress theme that features 40+ core features that gives users quick and easy access to an impressive array of powerful site-building tools, design aids, and options.
This, the biggest multipurpose WordPress theme of them all, features the responsiveness, flexibility, and performance you need to create websites that will showcase your business while leaving the competition in the dust.
BeTheme is Elementor ready, it is updated frequently, and its owners receive free lifetime updates. Click on the banner to find out more about this amazing theme’s powerful core features.
Being able to easily create a website that does justice to your business is naturally a good thing. Being able to build your site your way makes everything even better, and that is what the Total WordPress theme does for you.
Click on the banner to learn more.
The Electro WooCommerce theme gives you a complete design platform from which you can take your design vision and transform it into a pixel-perfect website. To help you along, Electro provides selections of home pages, dedicated mobile layouts, and multi-vendor marketplace pages.
Click on the banner to find out more. Be prepared to be impressed.
TheGem is a versatile creative WordPress theme with unlimited customizations, plenty of design & marketing focused features, collection of 400+ pre-built websites and fastest loading times.
You’ll love the 5-star user support, as have 60,000 others.
Vault has no problem living up to its claim of being a next-generation website builder, starting with upscale selections of 50+ full websites, 1200+ templates, and 230+ premium widgets
The Vault framework enables you to easily create an outstanding online presence that features customer-engaging pages.
This creative WordPress theme has everything you’ll need to build incredible websites and WooCommerce online stores. Uncode’s features include –
Uncode’s 100,000+ sales have made it an Envato top seller.
Blocksy is a free eCommerce WordPress theme that also gives you lightning fast performance, is completely eCommerce ready, and is absolutely loaded with intuitive website building features.
White Label is also offered.
Avada is the #1 best selling WordPress theme of all time, which might suggest there is really nothing more to say about why it would make a good choice.
Still, checking out Avada’s website is the best way to see for yourself what this Swiss Army Knife of WordPress themes has to offer like its –
And not to forget, its 750,000 happy users.
The innovative Rey WooCommerce theme is loaded with user-friendly features and is performance oriented, developer friendly, and easy to use.
Impeka gives you complete freedom to build an engaging website that is user friendly, fast, fully responsive, and professionally optimized for SEO.
You can select among Impeka’s 37+ detailed demos to get a project underway.
KnowAll, the #1 knowledge base theme for WordPress, gives you a powerful tool for building an intuitive to work with knowledge base.
XStore has provided users with an easy approach to building online stores from the get-go. An Envato favorite for the past 10 years, XStore gets projects off to a rapid start with its –
*******
The top WordPress themes that have been included in the above listing share a number of things in common.
Each features high quality designs, plenty of customization settings and options. Also, other useful features that have been incorporated with success in mind.
These top WordPress themes are popular for a reason. They make it easy to get the job done and get it done well. They are truly the best of the best.
No matter your choice, you will not be disappointed.
Read More at Top 12 WordPress Themes for 2023