Whether you opt for bubble graphs, bar charts, heat maps or treemaps, you can rest assured in the knowledge that scientific research is on your side. Of course, the text has its inescapable time and place, but when we consider that as much as 90% of information transferred to the human brain is visual, with images being processed 60,000 times faster than text, good data visualisation is a must for businesses wanting to deliver an easily digestible story to their audience.

A content strategist’s hunt for new and innovative ways to present data in visually appealing ways is never-ending. With that being said, let’s take a look at some effective data visualisation techniques that are worth bearing in mind during your next big campaign.

1. Inspiration: You Are Not Alone

So, some good news… sourcing data and creating an effective piece of data visualisation (data vis) to go with it doesn’t necessarily require suffering in silence. The website informationisbeautiful.net is one fantastic Pinterest-esque tool at your fingertips, filled with creative data vis inspiration and guidance.

2. Data Visualisation Tools

In a similar vein, be sure to explore the available online tools which are there to help you visualise your data in minutes. Such examples include:

DataWrapper

· Allows you to copy and paste from Google Sheets, Excel, CSV files.

· Allows you to link to URLs to create customisable charts.

· Allows you to preview the chart before you go ahead and publish it.

RawGraphs

· Allows you to copy and paste the relevant data directly from your spreadsheet.

· Allows you to choose a data vis type, with adjustable metrics.

Tableau

· Includes a blog full of useful tips well worth checking out.

3. Don’t Overcomplicate Things

Good data vis should simplify a message, making things easier to understand. Despite this, it’s incredibly common for people to associate increasingly complex graphs with higher quality. After wading through numerous eyesores on the ‘ugly charts’ section of the highly recommended website flowingdata.com I stumbled across this example highlighting why, in fact, the reality is often the exact opposite.

 

1. Mobile Friendly

Designing for mobile phones is a great opportunity to present data in new interesting ways.

You could:

· Stack your data vertically rather than horizontally and introduce a zoomable visual.

· Scale down the graphic.

· Create an entirely new graphic, focusing only on the critical insights (with the desktop version providing more context).

2. Choose Wisely

The type of data vis you choose is certainly no stab in the dark. Of course, a specific data vis will suit certain data, but when it comes to a (not-quite) one-size-fits-all choice, you can often not go too far wrong using maps, not least due to their ability to open up outreach targets. Furthermore, including an index may well be of use when dealing with lots of different metrics in your data, as is the case for interactivity, but remember to keep in mind the old adage of ‘less is more.’

By carefully taking this all into account, that next big campaign should be rooted in success.

As always from the team at Byter, good luck!

www.byter.com

Simply put, the potential revenue of an online company takes a massive hit if its website isn’t getting anywhere near enough traffic. With this in mind, let’s take a look at what you need to keep an eye on in order to help ensure that your business doesn’t succumb to such a fate.

Target audience

Question Time

The reasons your website isn’t getting any (increased) traffic can vary, but they’ll never be known unless you have a clear understanding of who to target. As such, ask yourself the following questions: Who are they? What are their needs? What are their concerns?

Your target audience not knowing that your website can provide them with solutions or, worse still, not even being able to find you in the first place, isn’t exactly a great way to increase your traffic. As such, we come to a fourth question that needs asking: in what ways can your business provide solutions?

Research

It all begins with research. Be sure to delve into your existing customer database to lead capture forms as well as analytics data to help create your ideal buyer persona and gain a fuller understanding of their buyer’s journey. Having done this, your website’s content can be suitably adapted.

Awareness

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing tactics can be used to ensure that your target audience is actually aware of your business and can associate you with solutions, paving the way for them to become customers.

To create such traffic during this awareness stage, it’s all about using the correct channels to provide relevant information for your target audience. Ideas include:

· Creating relevant content

· Improving SEO leveraging social media platforms

· Creating a Google Ads campaign

This should help in getting them on to your website, but they need to be engaged enough to stick around. At this stage of the buyer’s journey, new channels could be used. Ideas include:

· Chatbots

· A call to action

· Forms

CRM integration is a great way in which you can turn a lead into a customer at this stage. If this isn’t an available option for you, why not try emails and workflows? The resulting surveys and feedback on the likes of Google My Business or general social account promotion could snowball into attracting new visitors.

Keywords

With keywords playing a vital role in your site’s ability to rank well, you need to ask yourself what keywords you are trying to rank for through your current content and whether they are in line with what your target audience are searching for.

Keywords involve somewhat of a balancing act. Ones that are too popular are generally harder to rank for, while the opposite can drive no traffic at all. As such, it’s worthwhile to use a keyword tool, which provides an insight into the search volume and ranking difficulty of each keyword, as well as highlighting similar popular keywords related to your search term.

Be sure to specify search terms though long-tail keywords. For example, ‘branding agency notting hill’, as opposed to simply “branding agency.” Seed keywords with minimal competition as well as long-tail high-volume keywords are the way to drive an even higher amount of traffic.

Technical on-page optimisation

On-page SEO consists on technical elements, which should reflect the chosen keywords for each page. These technical elements include:

· Page titles

· Meta descriptions

· Alt tags

· URIs

· On-page content of a page

With on-page SEO being vital in terms of driving traffic to your website, it’s essential that you check that all of these technical elements are correct for your key pages.

Make sure not just to pull from the page content, and instead use a range of your offered services that a user may search for along with these terms. This will help Google to understand what your page is about, thereby improving your rankings over time, increase your traffic and ultimately allow your audience to associate your website with providing solutions to their problems.

Content

Ensure that the content on each page of your website is relevant to the user intent by linking your keywords, technical on-page optimisation and content all together. Your landing page is particularly important, as irrelevant content here will likely lead to nothing but your potential customers exiting the site, creating a high bounce rate.

Relevant Content Tips:

Keep content detailed

Use H1s and H2s to clearly organise content

Ask yourself, where in the buyer’s journey are your target audience?

Weave your keyword into your content

Don’t duplicate content from other pages

Blogs

Seldom does a great blog not involve a content strategy. By showing your expertise in the products and services you provide, an informative, authoritative and trustworthy image can be created. A solid and relevant content strategy will ensure you target a specific stage in your buyer’s journey.

As stated earlier, the potential revenue of an online company will take a huge hit if its website isn’t getting anywhere near enough traffic. By following the above advice, the possibility of your company falling into the same category should be kept well at bay.

Good luck!

www.byter.com