Hi everyone,
I just published a new visualization analyzing the relationship between logistics and regional profitability using a classic Superstore dataset, and I would love to get your feedback and critiques!
I wanted to explore: How does the relationship between shipping costs and profit margins vary across different US states? My goal was to test whether high shipping rates are driving specific regional markets into negative profitability.
How I Built It:
- X-Axis: AVG(Shipping Cost) to look at the typical expense of shipping a package to that state.
- Y-Axis: AGG(Profit Margin) using a custom calculation (SUM(Profit) / SUM(Sales)).
- Color: Red-Green Diverging palette based on profit margin to highlight the baseline break-even mark.
- Size: SUM(Sales) to show the total revenue volume and risk scale for each state.
What I’d love feedback on:
- Clarity: Is the scatter plot format easy to interpret for proving a relationship, or would a map style view actually have been better?
- Visual Encoding: Does using the size of the bubbles for total sales make the financial impact clear, or does it make the grid feel too cluttered?
- Design/Formatting: Any tips on improving the label placements or formatting to make it look cleaner and more professional?
I appreciate any notes, pointers, or formatting tricks you can share!
Thanks!
Good morning Maresa - I'll add my comment (not AI generated) -
Take a moment and stand back from the mechanics and ask yourself what is the message you want to convey to the viewer. Looking at the chart the Title says you are presenting Profit by state but the chart is really Profit Margin with total sales on Size, the color code doesn't add anything to the viz that is not already presented in the position on the vertical axis (and the position is really what a scatter plot is all about) - and finally you are presenting an Average - what average are youi presenting - AVG() is the average based on the record count (usually not of interext to a business user), average per order, per customer, or per product are tyipcally more meaningful.
Its a good start and I look forward to seeing more of your work - I see you are fairly new to Tableau and would recommend joining the Newbie TUG
https://usergroups.tableau.com/tableau-newbies-user-group/- this year our theme is the "Road to Certification" - our next meeting covers LODs and Table Calculation - hope to see you there -
