All Map enthusiasts, we have a special treat for you this week. You are going to love it! Some of you might have seen this already in our demos but this week you can touch it and feel it with your own hands (I mean your own data 🙂
Today digital map has become integral part of everyday life. Most organizations have data with geo attributes in some form or other and the need to understand geographical significance of data has been on the rise.
The combination of aggregating information with location and presenting them in a small space allows Map visualizations to present the big picture out of sea of data. They help you find the theme and outliers at a quick glance. While a 2D map can help achieve this goal to some extent, when it comes to multiple attributes and widespread data, they fell short.
A 3D Map makes this experience more immersive and magical. They provide the sense of connection to the data with the physical world. This, combined with our spatial ability, brings a new perspective to the data when we present them as 3D objects.
GlobeMap brings this magical map exploration experience to Power BI. To use, simply import the Globe Map from the Visuals gallery to your Power BI report and use it with a location data type. The location could be an address, city, county , state/province or country/region. On this 3D map, you can project a measure as the height of the bar. The 3D bars reduce the clutter of overlapping bubbles and allow you to get instant insight. GlobeMap also allows you to rotate the Globe and see it from different angles. But we didn’t just stop here. We added one more goody to this visual. The icing on the cake is the added benefit of heat map in this visual. You can use a second measure for heat intensity and draw immediate attention to the right areas.
For many mapping solutions, some location names may be ambiguous, when considered in the context of multiple countries or regions. You can increase the accuracy of geo-coding of such location names by concatenating the city, state and country. For example, instead of using just ‘Bellevue,’ as the location you can provide it as ‘Bellevue, WA, USA'.
NOTE: This Globe Map custom visual is not the same as Power Map for Excel (called 3D Maps in Excel 2016). Power Map is a 3D data visualization tool for Excel that lets you plot geographic and temporal data visually, analyze that data in 3D, and create cinematic tours to share with others in Excel. Globe Map is a custom visual for use within Power BI reports.
Google Analytics is one of the most popular website performance tracking tools that companies use to measure progress toward online marketing goals. It enables digital marketing teams to gain insights into their audience’s navigation behavior and preferred ways of interacting with content. Businesses can also discover which search terms led visitors to their site, which pages and content attracted the most viewers, and what percentage responded to a call-to-action.
What Google Analytics and Power BI can do together
Most organizations use Google Analytics to establish whether they’re meeting their marketing objectives, and obtain insights into what changes could be made to improve website performance. But with Google Analytics data in Power BI, it’s possible to uncover hidden relationships or patterns that point to completely new opportunities or suggest innovative marketing ideas and ways to attract new customers.
Google Analytics does a great job of tracking website visitor behavior, such as the number of unique page visits, time spent browsing a site, and geographic location of customers. But Google Analytics doesn’t offer a lot of analytic tools for connecting marketing data to data from other parts of the company, or to external data trends that are influencing the marketplace.
That’s the value added by Power BI. With Power BI you can compare web performance data in Google Analytics to data brought in from other sources, internal and external. Import data from HDInsight, Azure Marketplace, Exchange—or even Facebook, Wikipedia, and Data.gov. Evaluate web performance data against data you import from Salesforce, Marketo, or other sources. Enable colleagues to achieve a more holistic view of your organization’s performance.
For many users, what’s really exciting about Power BI is its dynamic visualization tools. Sure it’s great to measure how your website performs over time, but there’s a pretty big wow factor in watching data come alive in real time, uncovering multiple trends and relationships.
Consider Power BI map visualizations. They enable you to track where visitors to your site arrive from various locations worldwide over time. If a location catches your eye, you can drill down for more detail. See a spike in website traffic at a certain place and time? Zoom in and pinpoint the location. Cross check the time and place against contemporaneous events. Did the jump in traffic coincide with a local conference or sales announcement? Armed with this insight, you can better anticipate when people will visit your site, enabling you to add relevant and timely information to generate interest in your products or services.
Learn more about Connecting Power BI with Google Analytics here.
