10 Best Practices for Creating Infographics that Rock

Infographics are the talk of the town these days as far as internet marketers and designers are concerned. Everyday hundreds of new infographics are being designed and promoted on the internet.

Not only do infographics attract more traffic and viewership, because of their eye-catching designs, but also present the actual data, that is often complex, in a very user friendly and easy to remember style.

However, there are certain best practices for creating infographics that expert designers and marketers have identified over a period of time.

You need to follow these practices to ensure that your infographics go viral and attract lots of visitors.

1. Use the Right Tool

The most critical step in actually creating an engaging infographic, that attracts the attention of your audience, is selecting the right tool. The ideal tool should not only make it easier for you to create complex infographics without much effort but also give you a flexible range of options and designs to help save your time.

Currently, my favorite tool is EWC Presenter. This recently introduced free online infographic designing app has everything you need to create beautiful and engaging infographics. It offers a comprehensive range of infographic design templates and several drag & drop options that can help you make infographics without breaking a sweat.

Just like WordPress is to blogging and IM Creator is to building HTML websites, Presenter is a premium tool for creating infographcis but it also goes beyond that.

It’s being called “The swiss knife for all your visual content needs” because you you can also create professional presentations, slide shows, animations and even banner ads and easily publish and share or embed to your own website or blog.

2. Create Vertical Infographics

Infographics are either designed horizontally or vertically. However, a quick look at some of the most compelling and viral infographics shows that vertical infographics usually perform much better than the horizontal ones.

It is also recommended to design infographics vertically because of the natural flow of an internet user, which is from top to bottom, while browsing. The vertical infographics are also easier to view on most browsers and mobile devices, and tend to get much more social media shares as compared to the horizontal infographics.

3. Use Large Fonts

Infographics are very different from the standard text articles. The aim of infographics is to instantly attract user attention either through attractive visuals or interesting facts and numbers.

That is why the best infographics use font sizes that are much larger than the standard text articles. Try using a combination of font sizes for different areas of your infographic and highlight the key areas through increased font size and unique colors.

4. Use Complimenting Colors

There are two ways of using colors in infographics. You can choose a single color theme and apply different complimenting shades throughout the infographic, or you can choose random color sets for each section of your infographic.

However, infographics with different shades of a central color theme tend to perform much better than random colors. They get shared much more on social media websites and engage the audience much more effectively.

5. Keep Your Design Simple

While creating infographics, there’s always a tendency in designers to go for complex designs that carry abstract messages. However, complex designs don’t usually perform well when it comes to infographics.

The reason for that is simple. Infographics are targeted towards the masses, and their aim is to communicate complex data sets and dry facts in an attractive manner.

Complex designs kill that purpose and make it difficult for the viewer to understand the data presented in the infographic.

That is why it is very important that you keep the design of your infographic simple and easy to understand for your target audience.

6. Encourage Sharing

Infographics are meant to be shared and go viral. That is one of the core reasons of their existence.

However, successful infographics always carry an element of encouragement for social media sharing. There are several ways you can do that as well.

Make sure that sharing buttons are a part of your infographic design. You should also make it easy for your audience to embed the infographics on their own pages. You can create a simple embed code for your infographic by using this online embed code generator.

Embedding will not only make it easier for your audience to share your infographic, but also give you lots of valuable backlinks.

7. Cite Data Sources

Infographics are primarily based on data sets and information collected from different sources. Every top infographic clearly cites all the sources of its data collection.

This is very important for the credibility of your infographic and failure to comply with it may result in increased bounce rates and a reduced number of social media shares.

The best way to cite your data sources is either by making them a part of your design, or by mentioning them separately at the end of your infographic.

8. Create Responsive Infographics

Designs that automatically adjust their size and dimensions according to the device they’re being viewed on are called responsive designs.

Since a major portion of online traffic now comes from mobile devices, you must make sure that you create responsive infographics to cater to that traffic.

Responsive designs are a little more expensive to create but their need is increasing with every passing day since more users are moving to mobile devices as compared to desktop platforms.

9. Create Compelling Headlines

As much as infographics are about eye-catching visual and attractive graphics, the need for high quality text content will always be there.

Visuals alone are not enough to grab the attention of your audience. You need to create compelling headlines to immediately create interest.

Justlike text articles, your headline should not only be a clear reflection of the basic idea behind your infographic but should also be crafted in a way that generates interest and hungering your audience for knowing more.

If you get the headline wrong, your visitors might go away and not even get to the visuals.

10. Promote Your Infographic

A highly engaging and beautifully crafted infographic with an awesome design and mind blowing facts is no good if your audience doesn’t know about it.

That is why aggressively promoting your infographic is one the most important steps in getting them viral.

You can start promoting your infographics by submitting them to popular infographic directories. Here are some of them:

– Visual.ly

– Daily Infographic

– Cool Infographics

– Infographics Archive

– Infographic Journal

– Infographics Showcase

– Visual Loop

– Flickr

Also get in touch with the top influencers in your niche and try convincing them to share your infographics. Social media sharing and guest blogging are also mandatory steps while promoting your infographics.

Conclusion

The above are some best practices you can follow to guarantee your infographics are a success. Which of the above is your favorite?

About the author:

Payman Taei is the founder of HindSite Interactive, an award winning web designing and development company that creates custom web and mobile sites and applications for business and organizations.

Source: http://www.webdesigndev.com/web-development/10-best-practices-creating-infographics-rock