This is the first post of a two post services about the basics of building two types of Funnel charts in Tableau. Funnel charts in Tableau are used to represent various levels of a process or any logical progression in the form of funnels with a top-down approach. The size of the funnel can be shown through any measures like Revenue, Sales or Profits etc.
Before we learn how to create tableau funnel chart let’s understand when to choose this type of chart:
- When the data is sequential and processes through stages
- To reveal bottlenecks in a workflow
- To calculate potential measures (Sales/deals/profit/etc.) by stages.
- To track the progress and success of marketing campaigns
- To get survival processes/rate (jobs, admissions, sports)
- To calculate ‘survival rate’ and ‘conversion’ at every stage.
Funnel charts are very useful in identifying the problem areas in a process or identifying the biggest sales proportion. The tutorial below outlines the basic process of how to build a funnel chart in Tableau.
Funnel chart type 1: To calculate potential measures (sales /profits/revenues etc.) across various stages or types.
Objective: Use a Funnel Chart to identify the best ‘ship mode’ that contributes to more sales and the proportions of sales for different ship modes available.
I am using a Sample-Superstore dataset to build this funnel chart.
- Connect to Sample: Connect to the data source. I am connecting to “Superstore_Sample (Excel)” excel file under My Tableau Repository folder on my machine.
2.) Drag the worksheet into the “Drag Sheets Here” section and click the Go to Worksheet button.
Once the data displays, conduct the below steps.
- a) Drag the “Sales” dimension to “Rows” shelf.
- b) “Ship mode” to Colors,” Sales” to Size in Marks card.
- c) Select Automatic chart in Marks card.
- Sort “ship mode” in descending order based on the sales amount.
then,
- To label the stages, Drag “Ship mode” and “Sales” to Label in the marks card.
- To show the sales amount in percentages of the total, we can do tabular calculation. (Right click on Sum(Sales) in marks card -> Quick table calculation -> Percent of Total)
Formatting Funnel Charts in Tableau
5. Sheet Title: Right click on sheet and enter the details in the pop-up box.
Insight: From the funnel chart we can easily identify the sales percentages for each Ship mode and ‘Standard class’ ship mode contributes to more sales (around 60%).
Check back for our second post on the basics of building funnel charts in Tableau.
Posted by Gabe Gervelis
