After 3,000+ charts, here’s why I trust Flourish for interactive data stories

David Foster
Data Visualization Expert,
prev. Yahoo Finance

Yahoo Finance was the first place where I could clearly see how data visualization affects reader behavior. Because we were able to tag Flourish embeds in our monthly active user dashboard, we could see the direct impact: stories with visuals consistently had higher engagement and longer time on page.

Graphics became essential entry points into stories. A well-designed chart or map could pull someone in instantly, especially on social. And with more complex formats like scrollytelling pieces, the combination of motion, pacing, and narrative often sparked big conversations in the comments.

In a digital newsroom fighting for attention, data storytelling helps shape what gets covered, how it gets framed, and how deeply people engage with it.

The problem: from data to published story, fast

Before Flourish, my workflow involved multiple tools – QGIS, RAWGraphs, Illustrator – and a lot of exporting, restyling, and troubleshooting. Maps in particular required juggling files and rebuilding design elements by hand. Everything took longer than it needed to, and in a newsroom, speed is critical.

The Flourish effect: quick, on-brand data visualizations at scale

Flourish changed the old workflow immediately. Suddenly, I could go from data to a polished, interactive visualization in the same tool. The template library covered almost every chart type we used, and the branded themes meant everything matched our visual identity automatically. Plus, being able to duplicate a project to make a series became incredibly fast.

It also improved team collaboration. Instead of Illustrator files living on someone’s desktop, Flourish projects are cloud-based, so anyone could jump in and build off the work. Even when our CMS couldn’t support JavaScript embeds, Flourish worked with us to create an iframe solution so we could still produce scrollytelling pieces. It completely streamlined how we produced visuals in the newsroom.

And just as importantly, a single graph could be published once and reused everywhere - from articles to social media. The flexible export options and responsive interactive embeds made the process quick and easy.

How Flourish makes financial data easier to grasp

Flourish has powerful, flexible templates that are ideal for financial storytelling, and its ability to pull in live CSVs from finance APIs makes it a natural fit for visualizing fast-moving market data.

Plus, the template variety helped me support a variety of stories. Here are my favorites:

How I use Flourish vs Excel and Tableau

Are you wondering what is the difference is between Flourish and Excel, or Tableau?

I use Excel for analysis and Tableau for exploration, but not for final, public-facing graphics. Flourish fills that gap. It’s incredibly easy to learn if you’re already comfortable with Excel or Tableau, but gives you far more design control and interactivity. If you want to turn raw financial data into something clear, elegant, and engaging for a mass audience, Flourish is the tool I reach for.

Flourish transformed everything for us at Yahoo Finance. Its interactive templates let us produce clean, engaging visuals instantly, and moving to a web-based workflow meant the whole team could access and build off each other’s projects effortlessly.