Using Infographics to Clearly Communicate Your Company’s Message
The days when a company website could be a static page that simply catalogued its available products and services are long gone. The key to generating online traffic to your business is to provide valuable content that is entertaining while also informative to your audience. While a lot of sales copy is about the features of products and the benefits that come from using them, it is also often useful to present statistics about product usage and that relate to the demographics of your niche. With people’s ever-shortening attention span online it is often too much to hope that they will read through a long report that is filled with statistical facts and figures. This has led to a boom in using infographics in recent years.
Infographics aren’t a new concept in that we have been displaying information in charts and graphs for centuries. Some of the most commonly known infographics are maps that provide information about specific locations in a representative form (ie, population density). Pie charts, bar graphs and timelines are also all a means of displaying information in a quickly digestible form, which is what makes them perfect for use on websites since their messages can be seen at a glance. For instance, a web design company that wants to promote its mobile web design service might present a list of figures to show the number of mobile device users online, compared to those that are on hardwire PC connections. The reader is then confronted with making comparisons of different percentages for different age groups or between genders, whereas simple bar graph could show the same information in an easy to read visual format that clearly shows the predominance of usage across all of the demographic divisions in a glance.
Infographics add color and interest to a webpage and can be a subtle way to introduce your product as a solution to the situation that is being displayed visually. Another advantage of using infographics to promote your business is that they work well with social media and give added weight to your status updates because they are far more likely to be shared by other users than a text update will be.
For people that are familiar with popular computer graphics software, like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, creating your own basic infographics can be fun and easy to do. If you aren’t a computer artist it is still possible to design your own infographics using some excellent online services like Google Charts or IBM’s Many Eyes. The advantage of using services like these is that you can also access statistics from the public domain via their Public Data service, which gives users access to statistics that have been collected across the world.
Well-designed infographics start with good research and are presented in a way that makes their point quickly, usually by highlighting an interpretation of the statistics that readers will find surprising or unexpected. Also, it’s important to try and avoid putting too much information into one infographic and to stay on topic with what is represented. If you find that the graphic is getting too large it is a good indication that you have enough material for more than one infographic.
Many useful infographics can be found online but before using them make sure that you have the rights to do so by reading the Creative Commons License information and if there is an embedded code that links back to the original source make sure that it is included when you use it as well. If you create your own infographics be sure to include your own links and copyright marks so that they continue to promote your business when they are shared around the internet.
