The Case for Waterfall Charts in Visualizing Pricing Data

Waterfall charts are great ways to visualize pricing data, especially when used for internal decision-making in business/product groups and in guiding the Sales organization. Here’s why:

1. They start with at least one known data point the audience can easily anchor to: the product purchase price.
2. The chart is read from left to right, making it familiar and easy-to-digest for the audience:
   1. The first bar (far left of the x-axis) plots the product purchase price.
   2. The last bar (far right of the same axis) plots the either the net price or gross margin, depending on the objective of your analysis.
   3. The bars between the start and end points go up or down, depending on whether they increase or reduce the price (or profit) realization.

 
These visual cues flow and help the audience get your data story out quickly and effectively.
 
The waterfall chart below is an anonymized version I created for a Storytelling With Data challenge. It is based off of one I presented to inform executives and cross-functional teams about the magnitude and impact of pricing deductions offered by the Sales and Marketing organizations.  

What visuals have you used or seen used by others to represent pricing data?