What is a heat map and how can it help you dive deeper into your business analytics? A heat map is a color-coded representation of your data. Different color gradients represent various values and ultimately give you a clear snapshot of otherwise complex information. With Mapline, learning how to create a heat map from Excel spreadsheet data is easy. You can find out where customers, sales and marketing opportunities, or distribution centers are concentrated on a map. Follow these 8 simple steps to learn how to create a radial map:
Select whether you would like the heat map to be based on location density or the sum or average of your data.
Click on the “Styling” tab to set the opacity and blur. You can also remove the legend and fade the edges of the heat map.
Click “OK.”
Tips for Choosing a Geographic Heat Map Type
Not sure what type of heat map is best for you? Find out how to create a heat map that’s easy to read and represents your data clearly. Here are two ways you can determine your heat map selection.
1. Areas Around the Pins
Do you need to visualize pockets with high densities of customers? For example, a national textbook retail store may want to analyze neighborhoods within a 20-mile radius from local community colleges and universities. The “areas around pins” option is not only an efficient way to represent this data visually but also provides a big-picture view with a detailed look into large customer accounts or areas where many customers are located.
2. Overlapping Radius Areas
Are you a business that performs disaster recovery? Or, maybe you’re a planner scoping out your next office location or distribution center site. With the “overlapping radius areas” feature in Mapline, you can use heat mapping to visualize high-risk areas, report on performance by geographic areas, and choose optimal sites for anything from seminars and conferences to retail stores and more.
Start Building Radial Heat Maps With Mapline
Make data analysis simple by using a color gradient to contrast densely populated areas with less populated areas. Whether your dataset is customers, retail sites, location opportunities, competitors, or something else—you can create a clear picture. Ready to get started? Explore our plans and pricing. Or, contact us to learn more about how to create a geographic heat map and move your business insights forward.
