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“The key is no longer to get the information out there, but to get attention for it.” – Forbes
We live in a world that is constantly in motion. A world with countless mediums of viewing information which is amazing, yet with that brings countless and constant distractions. It’s harder than ever to grab someone’s interest, and even harder to keep it. Everybody is busy. People want to digest and understand information as quickly and easily as possible so they can move on to the next job they need to do or the next thing that peaks their interest. Visual forms of information like infographics capitalise on this.
“The Web is so graphic in nature, news stories and blog posts almost have to have some type of visual to get a reader’s attention” – Randy Krum, author of Cool Infographics interviewed for Design Journal
Infographics are the perfect combination of efficiency, learning and entertainment. Firstly, as you can see in our infographic above, they are proven to catch the eye more effectively than a page full of text content, but past that they allow us to learn and remember information in seconds without even realising it. How many times have you read a page of text to then realise you didn’t actually read or take in any of it? Using an infographic is a tool that can tremendously help a business whose core is to educate the public on their work so they are encouraged to use their service.
“Consumers do not want to read a lot of information and it is a fact that the majority of people absorb information better if it is presented in a visual manner. […] When an infographic is done correctly with the right content, design, and layout it can provide the serious return on investment (ROI) that every business owner desires.” – Huffington Post
FYI – Criteo
Criteo is an example of one of these businesses. Criteo specialise in web and cross-device technology that can be used to help the online marketing of a business. Criteo are one of our key clients here at Kino, and over the past year we have been working in collaboration with them to produce infographics to display on their website. Criteo’s success is dependent on the results they produce. Everybody needs proof that the product they are considering is something that works and is worth investing in. Criteo have data to back up their results, but it often comes in the form of pages (and pages) of data. This data needs to be made more digestible for the general user, especially one who may not have time to scour through all the technical details. Our job is to design and then build these infographics ensuring that they are consistent with the company branding, look great, and most importantly showcase their data in the cleanest and best way possible across all devices. Our major infographics for Criteo have been for occasions and holidays during the year, e.g. Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Ramadan.
Accessibility
We want the infographics we create to be as accessible as possible across all mediums of the web. We could create a static graphic that is uploaded onto a website as an image like our infographic about infographics, but if you were viewing that infographic on a mobile device you would struggle to read everything without manually zooming in. Using one static image with so much important text content on will also be a detriment to SEO as the key words cannot be recognised by search engines, but it is also not fully accessible to those who may have images disabled or use screen readers.
This is why we code a lot of our infographics using HTML 5. Creating our infographics this way allows us to host as much of the text data as possible on the site itself so it has maximum potential to get found by search engines, be accessible to everyone and can be easily updated. Doing this also allows us to make the infographic respond down and adjust to every screen size, as well as add in little interactive features. All our major Criteo infographics are developed in HTML 5, and we have also created a HTML 5 infographic for Yakult for their Love Your Gut website, specifically Gut Week.
The layout positioning and content adapt to the size of the screen like any regular website would. Infographics can be used in both print and digital forms, but digital infographics reach a larger audience, so when displaying an infographic on a website, the user will expect it to follow the same adaptability as the rest of the site. You don’t want to risk isolating your audience, especially as the use of mobiles for browsing the web over desktops continues to increase in popularity.
For the first time in March [2015], the number of mobile-only adult internet users exceeded the number of desktop-only internet users. – Comscore
The little extras
Now, you could create an infographic that looks incredible, and the user may take notice and read it but it doesn’t engage them as much as it could. Through our responsive infographics for Criteo in particular we like to include animations and sections that the user can interact with.
On our Valentine’s Day infographic the lid of the chocolate box moves to reveal the contents when you land on the page, and rose petals fall throughout. On our Ramadan infographic the moon travels through its different stages as the infographic goes through the weeks of Ramadan, and the user can select the weeks they want to read by clicking the objects on the table.
These type of effects may not be essential and the data should always take top priority when creating the design, but these little details just add that extra flair to the infographic that could not be done in a flat image, and it makes them more memorable. If a user is physically engaging with your site they’ll stay on it longer, if they liked the experience they may travel further into the site to see what else is available and even return in the future and use your service.
Bring all these elements together and you’re one step closer to a new customer.
You can view all the infographics we do, including our work for Criteo and Yakult, by visiting the infographics section of our portfolio.