You may want to understand the income pattern around your stores or across the places where your customers live. Your existing map pins give you locations to examine, and Census income data offers context for a site or territory discussion.
How much of the surrounding area should the map describe? A view around one store and a view across a whole sales region call for different scales, even when you're interested in the same income measure.
Choose the income geography
Start with the pins you already have and the question you want the overlay to answer. A view around a single store needs a different level of detail from a view across a large sales region. Choose a boundary set that gives enough local detail to compare the places you care about.
Maptive's built-in Census boundary fills support the United States and Canada. Use a compatible boundary set for the country where your locations are. Then check the boundaries against the actual spread of your pins. A large area can include several communities with different income patterns, even though it receives one color on the map.
Changing the boundary scale changes the area represented by the income figure. A pin near an area edge may be close to households across that edge, too. Consider both sides of the edge when you use the overlay to discuss the surroundings of a store. The boundary containing the store is useful context, but it isn't a complete description of everyone who might visit.
Before adding the layer, check a few familiar locations. An address plotted in the wrong town will get the income context of that town. Correct a misplaced pin before you read anything into the shaded area beneath it. You don't need to rebuild a good customer map to add income, but the location data still needs to be right.
Load income data under your markers
Open your map and use the Boundary Tool to add the demographic layer.
- Open Map Tools.
- Select Boundary Tool.
- Choose your Boundary Set.
- Choose Demographic Census Data as the fill type.
- Use Select Demographic Group to choose the group containing the income data you need.
- Use Select Fill Data to choose the specific income measure.
- Click Load Boundaries.
Choose the measure by its full label. Median household income is one income measure available in Maptive's demographic overlays. Household income, individual earnings, and other income fields describe different things, so don't choose a field only because its name includes “income.” Read the label before loading it.
Once the boundaries appear, look for the relationship between the fill and your markers. You should be able to see both the income pattern and the locations you brought into the map. Click a few areas, including a light and a dark one, and check that the selected measure explains their colors.
Record the source period shown for the selected data. If you can't establish the period from the available information, resolve that before describing the view as a particular year's income. A recent map creation date doesn't make its demographic estimates a current-year snapshot.
Use the same field and geography for areas you're comparing. A household income figure in one area and a personal income figure in another won't support a useful comparison, even if both are dollar amounts.
Make the overlay readable
Choose useful income ranges
Open the Fill Settings icon, then Customize Fills. Here you can change the color progression, number of ranges, individual range colors, and opacity. Start with colors that let a reader follow the income values from lower to higher without checking every area one by one.
Maptive offers Value Ranges and Percentage Ranges for calculating the fill ranges. Value Ranges attempts to put roughly an equal number of boundaries in each range. The dollar span can differ between ranges because the calculation uses the distribution of areas.
Percentage Ranges divides the span between the lowest and highest values into equal parts. Some ranges may contain no boundaries. An unusually high income value can widen that full span, leaving many areas grouped toward the lower end of the color scale.
Try both choices to see which helps answer your question. If the purpose is to compare how areas rank within the mapped region, look at how Value Ranges separates them. If you want equal intervals across the dollar span, inspect Percentage Ranges. Read the actual range limits in either case. Similar colors can cover different income intervals when the settings change.
Keep the number of ranges modest enough that people can tell neighboring colors apart. More ranges can help with a detailed examination, but they also ask the reader to distinguish more shades. When comparing views, keep the same range method and check their limits before treating a color as the same income band in both.
Keep the pins and labels clear
Reduce fill opacity if the shaded areas compete with the pins. Check a crowded part of the map as well as a sparse one. A setting that looks clear around one store can become hard to read where many customers are close together.
Use Boundary Formatting to adjust Line Width and Line Color. Heavy internal lines can distract from the marker pattern. Thin lines may work better for a local view, while a wider regional view may need more contrast to separate areas.
The label options include Include Name, Include Value, and Include Legend. Choose the information someone needs to identify an area and read its income value. Check labels at the zoom level you expect people to use, since a close-up can hide crowding that appears when you zoom out.
Be careful with Custom Value. It can show another measure in a label while the fill still uses the original measure. If you use that option, make the distinction clear in the map's explanation. Someone should be able to tell which number controls the colors.
You can store multiple fills, but only one displays at a time. Before saving or sharing a view, check which fill is currently showing and make sure its legend matches your description.
Read income beside your own data
Click an area to inspect its details. To add a demographic metric to the pop-out, open Customize Metrics, choose Demographic Data, and select the Region as United States or Canada. Choose the demographic group and metric, then click Add to Proximity Details.
This lets you read the area's income information while examining your own locations. Choose only the metrics that help answer the question. A long list of demographic fields can make it harder to find the income value you came to inspect.
Your spreadsheet measures have their own calculations. Maptive supports Sum, Average, High Value, Low Value, and Group Count for those fields. A sales sum describes the sales recorded in your table. A Census income measure describes the selected geography. Keep their names distinct so a reader doesn't mistake one for the other.
Check several areas against the source records you know. Look at the customer or store fields, then the demographic fields. If a region has few customer pins and a high income value, the map supports those two observations. It doesn't establish why there are few customers there or what added sales would follow from opening a store.
For a boundary income overlay, use the selected boundary's measure as stated. Don't turn that figure into a custom-radius median by averaging the values of areas a circle happens to touch. That would require a separate calculation with suitable underlying data.
Interpret the income estimate correctly
Keep median income with its area
A median marks the middle of a distribution. You can't add the median household incomes of several regions to get a meaningful total. Averaging those medians also doesn't give you the median household income of the combined region.
Regions can contain different numbers of households and different income distributions. Their medians alone don't contain the detail needed to calculate the combined median. Keep each estimate attached to its geography, or use an estimate published for the larger geography you need.
Treat missing values carefully. Census income estimates for small areas can be suppressed when uncertainty is too large. An absent value doesn't mean household income is $0. Check the meaning of a blank or unavailable value before including the area in a comparison.
Keep the source period with the map
American Community Survey five-year estimates describe a five-year period. They don't capture a sudden economic change as though they were measured on the day you opened the map. For changes over time, Census recommends comparing non-overlapping five-year periods.
When someone asks whether an area's income rose recently, first establish the periods behind the two figures. Check their geography and measure, too. A comparison between mismatched periods can give a misleading impression of change.
Finish with a short description that preserves the selected income label, boundary geography, and established source period. Include the range method when the colors are central to the comparison. Open the finished view at its intended zoom level and check that the pins, income colors, and legend can all be read together.
