Infographics – Are They Useful or Useless?

Infographics are a phenomenon which have arrived and refuse to go away. We see them used in practically everything these days. You can find them on practically any social media website about any subject. A lot of websites have steadfastly refused to be taken in by the craze, though. The amount of people who read Infographics remains small. And they aren’t suitable for every single type of website.

SEE ALSO: 6 Ultimate Blogging Tools You Should Use Infographics

Image Credit: Detlef La Grand

Do they have any real use, though?

What’s an Infographic?
Infographics by definition are any image which releases any sort of information. Technically, any diagram in an instruction manual counts as a type of Infographic. The modern Infographic is something different, though. It’s a digital image placed on a website or in an email. It’s filled with texts and images designed to communicate some overarching point.

The highly graphical nature of these modern Infographics has made the concept popular. It originally started as a way to present business proposals and raw data, but now you can find them used to explain things like social media reach.

Spread
They have a reach roughly equivalent to the Black Death. They’re simple to spread as image files are small and can be transferred without any problems. Furthermore, they aren’t marked for deletion by Google’s search engine as image files are discounted. They don’t break any online rules relating to duplicate content.

The same thing doesn’t apply to text. Try to spread a piece of text around and Google will deindex the offending pages. There are no consequences for transferring Infographics.

Some people might argue there’s text in the image, but because it’s part of an image file Google doesn’t register it as text.

Web Promotion
Another use for these tools is the poster advert. The poster advert has always been an effective way to spread a message. You design an Infographic in exactly the same way as any poster. You start with some sort of headline and steadily move downwards with various images and pieces of text.

You can use them in a similar way to sitemaps. Explain what’s on your website and how people can access it. For example, an online book store could divide their Infographic into different genres with varying colours. It makes it easy to refer to and people find it interesting as it catches the eye straight away.

An alternative method includes revealing sales metrics. You can tell people how much you sold last month or last year.

Diagrams
If you need to teach someone how to use something, you could break out one of these Infographics. It could tell people, via a step-by-step guide to use your website. This is essential if you’re featuring a specialised quoting engine or an ordering system. It increases the rate at which people take in information because instead of reading through a whole page they’re browsing just a few words.

You can jazz up your diagram with fun facts about each part of your site, such as how someone has used it successfully.

Explain a Product
Whilst it’s ideal, you can’t always explain a product in five words or less. Sometimes you need to hold your customer by the hand and guide them through an explanation of your product. A simple text-based explanation is boring and will likely turn people off. Break out an Infographic and add some hilarious images or comments to make it less monotonous.

Tailor the Infographic and the way you explain your product to the style of your website. If you’re offering a corporate product, stick to the facts and figures.