How best to represent a web app's usage?

Question

I've been gathering data for the usage of a web app. For each day at the same hour and over several months I have:

• (A) total number of members
• number of online members and its % to (A)
• number of members who connected during the day and its % to (A)

• number of new members

• number of forum members

• number of new forum members

• number of chat participants

Plus the periods where it was on sale (there's one time fee to access it).

What can I show with those data and how best to represent it graphically ? (I'll be using Apple Numbers.)

Answer 1

Well, it mostly depends on the intended usage of the data. Often, data of this form is intended to show the influence or reach of an application. For this, most businesses will report some form of the average unique users during some time period, like "500 unique visitors each month", or facebook's "active daily users". For an application with a key activity, like uploading photos, you might also report something related to that activity, like "5 new photos uploaded every second." Would your data allow that? For displaying it graphically, a simple line our bar chart showing how the influence (y) grows over time (x) is usually sufficient.

If you can tell us more about what you hope to use the data for, others may have better ideas than mine.