It’s proven that humans process visual information 60,000 times faster than written text. With studies showing that people can remember 80% of what they see and do – compared to a mere 20% of what they read – can you afford to be overlooking visual elements of your marketing strategy?
Back in 2012, the internet was saturated with infographics as marketing teams sought to capitalise on visual consumerism. These long-form graphics proved popular for a time, but over the last ten years, they’ve fallen out of favour with marketers and consumers alike.
While many merely abandoned the concept of visual-led content pieces, the better brand teams simply adapted their strategies.
As designers, we’re constantly improving how we can deliver complex information in simple and easy-to-understand ways. Instead of long-form infographics, we’re now leveraging the human ability to process visual information by using shorter data visualisation pieces. These bite-sized content pieces serve the same purpose as infographics but are much more suited to the way modern users consume content.
Yet it’s not merely about making the most of how humans process and remember information. There are multiple benefits that data visualisation can have on your digital marketing strategy, from increased brand awareness, to improved user experience and tech SEO metrics.
Let’s take a closer look…
Data Visualisation Improves Brand Credibility
Infographics have a bad reputation. This is largely because the digital landscape was oversaturated with these long-form pieces, and for every great infographic out there, countless others were poorly designed.
Many businesses assumed that it was enough to design an infographic themselves using software such as Microsoft Word or PowerPoint rather than Illustrator or InDesign. But without the eye of a professional designer, fundamental design principles like space, colour, and hierarchy are poorly considered and the results suffer.
75% of a website’s credibility is judged on aesthetics alone, so if your brand is associated with poorly made and outdated infographics, you’re risking your online reputation with consumers. Data visualisation as we know it today offers much more creative freedom and opportunity for clear messaging designed to engage users and deliver value to your brand identity.
Using individual graphics ensures that key messages don’t get lost. Each graphic can be engaging and convey a unique piece of data, rather than having to force graphics and content to fit together in a single image. A consistent style can still be maintained across individual graphics, but there’s much more flexibility to interpret and utilise it in different ways.
Raise Brand Awareness with Bite-Sized Visuals
Data visualisation is consistently popular with journalists and online media sources. By incorporating these types of graphics into your digital marketing strategy, you can increase the chances of your content being read and covered by key publications, quickly raising brand awareness in the process.
Journalists prefer separate visuals as it allows them the flexibility to choose which pieces of content they want to use, rather than being restricted to a single image. In turn, these smaller graphics can be used to break up written content making it easier for readers to digest articles and remember your brand message.
Data visualisation gives Digital PR teams the flexibility to be reactive and respond quickly to trends and stories using smaller pieces. Bigger infographics take much research and design time to develop, meaning you could miss out on a trending topic that suits your brand.
Easy to Scan Graphics Can Improve UX
Scannability is a huge factor in improving the user experience. Most readers will struggle to engage with large blocks of text, so using graphics to enhance the narrative and break up a text-heavy article is essential to positive UX.
Yet it’s not enough to use any old imagery. Readers will also struggle to engage with content if there’s too much to process. Lengthy infographics packed with information will cause them to disengage just as quickly as long paragraphs of text, so it’s important to use a series of graphics that are easy to read, share and repurpose.
Smaller graphics also mean better UX trust signals, especially on mobile devices. 45% of users want to see content that displays well across all devices, yet large infographics rarely translate beyond the desktop making them difficult to share and repurpose. Smaller data visualisation pieces will give your users a much smoother and more cohesive experience across platforms.
Optimise Site Speed With Smaller Designs
If you’re conscious about site speed (and you should be!) it can be natural to shy away from using images on site. Larger images can slow down your page load speed, and with 53% of mobile visitors leaving a page that takes longer than three seconds to load, your bounce rate could quickly begin to suffer.
Smaller data visualisation pieces don’t take the same toll on your page load speed and can improve engagement and indexability. With standard infographics, the text becomes part of the image and therefore can’t be indexed by Google, rendering it useless from an SEO perspective. Data visualisation that supports indexable text will make sure your content gets found organically, and any users you do bring to your site will stay engaged for longer – all positive signals that Google’s algorithm will reward you for.
Increase Engagement With Interactives
It stands to reason that interactive content pieces are more engaging since they require the user to physically engage. But interactive visuals are about more than a distraction for users to tap and click. Adding an interactive element to your data visualisation can help make content more accessible, enhance your brand reputation, and send positive UX signals to Google.
Accessibility
If you’re presenting a large dataset to support the key messages of your article, users may find it difficult to find the information most relevant to their interests at a glance. Adding an interactive element means they have more control over filtering and sorting data in a way that helps them to understand and digest it better. This level of accessibility will send positive engagement signals to Google and increase important UX metrics.
UX Signals
UX metrics should be a key consideration when creating visual content, time spent on-page is one of them. Interactive content lends itself to immersive functionality such as animations and micro-interactions. These elements are designed to further engage users and give them an additional level of control that rewards them for exploration, encouraging them to dive deeper into the content and spend extra time on the page.
Brand Reputation
Having interactive content at your disposal speaks to your brand reputation. As mentioned above, 75% of a website’s credibility is judged on aesthetics alone, so if your brand is putting out impressive pieces of interactive content and your competitor is circulating a poorly designed infographic, it’s easy to see which your users will be impressed by.
Plus not all content can be represented by static images alone. By utilising interactive content you can engage users with data and topics that translate better as games or quizzes which will be far more interesting to them than a simple graphic or text post.
Impressing users may not seem like a top priority, but the levels of engagement that it lends itself to should. Trust and authority are key elements that Google uses to judge how your website should be ranked in search results, so if it sees high user engagement, a strong backlink profile, and high social shares as a result of your interactive content, your organic performance will benefit.
Design can benefit all areas of digital marketing from CRO to PR, providing that you stay ahead of user engagement trends in the online landscape. It should be an integrated part of your content strategy that works to improve key metrics and trust signals that benefit your organic traffic and visibility in kind.
Interested in learning more about how data visualisation can enhance your digital marketing strategy?
If this post has got you thinking about your own approach to content marketing and data visualisation and you find you need a helping hand, get in touch!
