They say a picture paints a thousand words when it comes to detailed statistical data.
OK, OK ‘they’ don’t say that but we definitely do! The most effective way of explaining complex issues in a clear and easy to understand form is with a picture or data visualisation.
In the last five years, infographics or data visualisations have become a popular medium for conveying statistical messages in a useable way as they are easy to consume and share. With the rise in social media use and our need for instant results, data visualisations serve to provide content in bite-sized digestible chunks.
For businesses looking to make sense of complexed statistical data and make real-time business decisions, data visualisations are a real asset. They break information down into logical and meaningful parts and help users to avoid information overload by keeping things simple, relevant and clear.
We’ve put together four ways data visualisation can help your business improve decision making.
1. Faster Response Times
Big data is an extremely valuable resource for businesses. Marketing managers, sales managers, directors, service reps need vital data at their fingertips to be able to do their day jobs. It is incredibly useful for sales managers to be able to list key statistics from past sales campaigns to a prospective client in real time on sales call instead of having to say they will go away and search for the information and get back to them. Alternatively for a marketing manager to be able to access key market trend analysis at the touch of a button is invaluable. Data visualisation puts data into the users’ hands enabling them to quickly identify issues and improve response times.
2. Simplicity
Advances in technology mean the types of information companies are collecting from their customers and audiences are multiplying. From traditional sources such as customer mailing addresses and phone numbers to more advanced demographics such as customer behaviour and buying patterns from social media, mobile apps, websites and CRM interactions, this titanic of information is being generated every single day in the digital world. Data visualisations give users a big picture view while still being able to see the details when needed. They simplify data so that users are able to cherry-pick the relevant data they need.
3. Easier Pattern Visualisation
Spreadsheets are the bane of many marketing managers lives when trying to find patterns in data while reviewing hundreds of lines in spreadsheets. Data visualisation is a much easier way to see new paths and to identify new patterns and trends.
4. Team Involvement
Data visualisations publicly display important data in real time, so every department has access to the information it needs to better collaborate. These infographics display a combination of company metrics, which is great for keeping everyone in the company on the same page. CMOs can base their customer strategy and product marketing strategies from the information and search hidden patterns in the data produced by customer activities.
Acrotrend takes data seriously and has a strong vision to empower our clients to discover more about their customers. We ask our clients:
- “What are your businesses key questions?
- “Who is asking them?”
- “How would you access the insights?” “
- “How much information do you need to know?”
- “What will you do with the answers?”
And as designers, we follow best practices to help our users avoid information overload by keeping things simple, relevant and clear. We categorise our data, select the most appropriate charts and normalise scales. We recognise the importance of layout and background and use navigation, animation and icons to interact with data visualisations.
To find out more about how Acrotrend can help you to discover more about your customers in a succinct way, request a free consultation with our experts today.