Melissa Burns — February 21, 2018 Although text and figures may be the best way to transfer complex information without losses, the sad truth is that human brain has to apply quite a bit of effort to properly process it. In addition to that, your average modern Internet-faring human has a notoriously short attention span and will likely get bored and wander off before reaching the most critical segment of information.
That’s why packing data into an easy-to-grasp, intuitive visual format is a must for any business that is willing to grow and keep competitive. And it is important not just for attracting customers – so let’s see what you can do with it and how.
1. More Believable Ads
There is a well-known study that clearly demonstrates how efficient scientifically-looking information supported with graphical elements is in persuading people. In short, it goes as follows: two groups of people are presented with a statement, one in a text form, another in text accompanied by a graph. When asked if they believe what they’ve read, 68 percent of the first group answer in affirmative, vs. a whopping 98 percent of people from the second group. Information presented in graphical form isn’t just easier to process – something happens in the brain that makes it more believable.
2. Explanation Videos
When somebody first encounters your business and doesn’t know yet what you do and what sets you apart from the crowd, you can rely on an “Our Mission” page of your website, where you carefully describe the main concepts of your business model. Or you can do the same in a visual format: prepare a short and colorful explanation video that will tell the visitor a story. You can pack a surprising amount of info in a 3-5 minute video, with an added benefit of immediately setting a foundation for a recognizable style (if you keep it consistent across other media). Explanation videos are especially useful for businesses that go off the beaten track and offer non-traditional goods and services.
3. Better Information Consumption among Management
Data visualization isn’t just useful to explain what you do and persuade customers to buy from you, but to make for better processing and usage of information among the employees of your own company. From all the information transmitted to the brain, 90 percent is visual – but at the same time, most business intelligence reports presented to senior management mostly consist of tables and charts that make no effort to make the data vivid. Using data visualization can help them find the necessary info in a timely manner and do without the help of IT staff to do so.
4. Real-Time Data Interaction
Another advantage for management is that, unlike spreadsheets and text reports, data visualization tools can present information in real time and give the user an opportunity to interact with it. For example, if an executive studies an Excel spreadsheet, he can find out that a particular product is currently underselling. But he won’t be able to understand why it is happening and to find correlations with other data (i.e., performance of different color variants of the product) he will either have to order another report or spend an inordinate amount of time trying to glean out the necessary info. Using real-time data visualization, he can see current figures and see connections with other information (e.g., discounts by competitors).
5. Mooring Data in Reality
Sometimes when making a business decision, it helps to move away from abstractions to more concrete images. That is, instead of trying to figure out what to do with the idea that clients from demographic A don’t show sufficient interest in product B, it may be more helpful to use another approach. Visualize the image of a typical customer from this demographic and try to decide how to persuade them to buy or how to modify the offer to make it more interesting specifically for them.
Data visualization offers incredible opportunities both concerning interaction with customers to tell them about your business and creating new and more efficient ways to present and use information within your own company. Staying at the cutting edge of this tech is certainly an essential competitive advantage.
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