Britain's Changing High Street Businesses

From SimplyBusiness.co.uk comes the Our Changing Highstreet: The Rise and Fall of High Street Shops infographic.

A third of independent High Street shops are now cafes, pubs, restaurants, and takeaways, a major new survey from Simply Business has found.

The survey, which looked at some 75,000 businesses quoted by Simply Business between 2008 and 2010, also found that hairdressers and beauty salons are beginning to thrive – with the former now the most common type of non-hospitality establishment on the High Street.

But retailers have fared worse, with clothes shops and newsagents showing a marked decline during the period.

Unsurprisingly London remains the country’s foodie heaven – with restaurants now making up 11 per cent of the capital’s High Street businesses.

I like the different ways to look at the data, and the connecting lines in the changing ranking visualization are really well done.  I like the ones that connect to additional listings below the visuals, presumably to the actual location on the listing.

I don’t understand some of the ranking change visuals off to the right.  Computer shops fell from #12 to #14 in the list, but the change visual shows “New Entry” instead of Down 2?

Apparently I should go drinking in Wales though!

Thanks to Mark for sending in the link!

Comments

[Stefan]

Absolutely amazing infographic..gives a brief overview of how companies are affected by the recent recession...

[Kevin]

I really like the rank comparison in the first section. Is there any way to make a chart anything close to this in MS Excel? Do you know what application was used or was it likely straight up graphics design magic?

[Mark]

Hi Kevin, thanks for your comment about the infographic. I spoke to the people who created it, and you are right - it was 'straight up graphics design magic' - Adobe Illustrator to be precise. Not sure of other ways of making it - would be a nice feature in Excel.