When you are in the world of marketing, there are multiple things that you need to get in touch with. The two critical terms in this field are data visualization and the information design process. You must go deep into these terms and focus on them individually. These terms act as a bridge between graphic designers and content writers. It is a combination of explaining a purpose in the form of plain text and elaborating something in the form of a diagram.
When you hear about this term, do you have infographics at the back of your mind? If you do, you are 50% correct in your assumption. This design process includes a range of infographics, but it has more factors than just that. People usually confuse info design and data visualization as different terms with the same meaning. However, both of these terms are different from one another. In this article, we will elaborate on everything about info design and how it can impact an online business.
What is Information Design?
Do you want transparency within your business objectives? Do you want to ensure that your business has a significant online presence and stands out with respect to the rest of your competitors? If you have the intention, you must know what information design is. A diagram helps you process a story based on factual data. In simple words, it is a storytelling tool that represents structured data in the form of a graph. You use this process when you want to display data with a specific intention and without elaborating it too much with words.
In this procedure, you tell the audience about the data set you are using and the specific factors involved. However, you must understand that the data has already passed the conclusion stage, and the design presents the conclusion. On the other side, data visualization is raw data that enables the viewers to derive their own decisions. When you add new information (such as visuals) to your data, the data visualization process may change its final form.
Importance of Information Design
1) Increase SEO
If you want an effective information design at your disposal, you must look after your search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. When people invest time in browsing your content, the Google bots will take notice of your web pages. If you publish your content on your YouTube channels, there is no reason why the viewers won't recognize it and spend more time watching it. If you use your data analytics as part of your website content, you will see a decline in your bounce rate.
Image taken from Strikingly
There is no point in creating an outstanding website design when there is nobody to recognize your hard work and investment. It is not just about creating a fantastic design and thinking your job is done. It is also about promoting and ensuring that your customer base starts noticing your actions. Strikingly provides its users with an SEO checklist, which helps them concentrate on their website elements from an SEO perspective. The checklist underlines important SEO factors, such as meta-description, meta-titles, image optimization, etc.
2) Explain Your Message
When you complete the information design process, your objective is to provide information that the viewers can quickly grasp. Rather than going for the long plain text paragraphs, the design process makes it easy for the viewers to understand the message. The reason is that the viewers find it easy to understand through visuals rather than long paragraphs of plain text. If you can convey your message properly through visuals, it will result in a low bounce rate.
When people go through vast paragraphs of content, they would likely get distracted. After a few seconds, they would forget where they have to continue the range, which makes them read the entire content all over again. If the viewers are provided with an exciting diagram explaining a storyline or a concept, it will save them time and help them focus correctly.
3) Increase Shareability of Content
When people find an effective information design, they will not just be able to understand it correctly but also share it with others. If your website content is equipped with informative diagrams, people will share it with their friends and relatives. If people feel they know something innovative, they will always talk to their relatives about it. When they realize that the promotional content is part of a website landing page or a social media advertisement, they will find ways to promote it in their network.
Promoting content on social media is as easy as creating a social media account these days. Within a couple of clicks, you can share others’ content as part of your timeline. Using informative diagrams as part of your Facebook post has a good chance of going viral. However, we recommend you to use Instagram to promote content in the form of visuals or quality images.
Principles of Information Design
1) Empathize
As a professional, you can not create a solution without understanding the problem. Therefore, the first step of the information design principles is to put all the assumptions in one place and prioritize the users’ demands and needs. The best way to do that is by making your audience feel curious and getting them involved with some questions.
You can ask questions directly to understand your customers’ psychology. You can understand their true motivations and problems by involving them in some questions. Moreover, you can create a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page on your website to help them understand your business vision. You can consider interviews, press conferences, surveys, pamphlets, or even social media polls to identify a solution to their demands. However, knowing that your design will only be as good as the information you collect through those sources is important.
2) Core Problem
Once you have identified the demands from your target market, the next step is to use that information and define a core problem to be solved. It is arguably one of the most important information design principles overall. To improve results, you prioritize this step around the people you want to help rather than your own needs.
Image taken from Strikingly
For example, if you want to include a new product of PlayStation 5 as part of your website, you would have a few barometers to consider. You can say to yourself that you have a specified sales goal for this product, so it is essential to integrate this product into your platform and convert your viewers into paying customers. Instead, redefine your problem as “People want the most recent games alongside their gaming console, so we can give them a game that was launched in 2022 alongside the console”. Strikingly provides its users with an order management system, which helps them to look into all the details regarding the orders submitted by their customers.
3) Brainstorm
Usually, brainstorming is a step that comes in the initial part of a business idea, but not all ideas follow the same sequential plan. Therefore, it is important to let everyone part of the information design process know that they should be creative and learn how to brainstorm. If you know about brainstorming techniques as part of your previous experience, you can give them a go. However, you should never be afraid of trying new methods.
If you go by techniques such as brainwriting, mind-mapping, and storyboarding, it is likely to generate new ideas. You must have all the possible options or alternatives before you finalize your storyline or the design.
4) Test Your Designs
When your design is good enough to get your message across, you can share it and collect customer feedback. You can send it to some colleagues within your company, who can gather a few members of the audience and let them provide their insight. If you want to create an effective information design, you must take account of everyone’s reactions onboard. If they are confused by your storyline or concept, you must identify steps to remove their confusion. You must be given the final signal from your audience that your information is clear and accurate.
Conclusion
As you know that an effective information design makes your life easy as a marketing person, it is vital to put things into perspective. How about using innovative diagrams as part of your social media posts across all platforms? If you are not satisfied with using your social media accounts, you can create a professional website to support and promote your content. If you don’t have a professional website yet, make sure that you consider Strikingly.
Strikingly is a free website builder that helps you create beautiful websites without breaking a sweat. Once you come to our landing page, ensure you complete the registration process quickly, which will help you come into our bracket of free plan users. As part of the free plan, you can create a professional website with all the fundamental features from Strikingly. If you are experiencing any difficulties while developing your website, make sure that you contact our Happiness Officers. So, create a professional website and support your content to attract more customers to your platform.
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