65% of us are visual learners and although our social media platforms are full of engaging images and video, the team at Threesides are still coming across very text heavy websites and clients that need to be encouraged to invest time or money on good imagery. As digital marketers we know the importance of keywords and search engine optimisation but how long does your audience stay on your website when, put it bluntly, it’s boring! What about making your website as visually engaging as Facebook and Instagram so people actually learn and remember something interesting?
I’ve been a big fan of mccrindle social researchers for some time because of the way they present detailed research in a visual format. The infographic below reminded me how they transform text-heavy data into a picture that I’ll remember. A month later, I can still recall key points from this: I know that over 60 years Australia had a 261% increase in population, we’ve gone from man flood to drought with just under 100,000 more females than males and there are 14% more people over 85. I didn’t remember everything but I remembered more from a glance at this than the text-laden Wikipedia on the demographics of Australia.
It’s about getting the balance right. If you have a lot of text on your website, have another think about how 1000 of your words could be translated into an infographic or you could demonstrate key points with a photograph. Don’t remove all text but identify the key points you want to make on the page and use keywords from your text in the Alt Text, Description and Titles of your images because chances are many people will be finding your product through an image search not just the text on your page.
McCrindle Research | Know the Times
Think you need a graphic designer to whip up an infographic or to invest millions in photography? Well, it’d be nice, but it’s not mandatory. Try using free online tools like Piktochart or Canva to create relevant infographics. After stock images that have some heart to them? We love Shutterstock (who kindly donated the feature image to this article) and Death to Stock – the digital photography database that is revolutionising the way we access images.
Do you know of any great online tools for helping create visually appealing sites? Let us know on our Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, or tag us on Instagram!
Image Source: Shutterstock
