How to Create an Interactive Infographic: The Definitive Guide

Even though infographics have been used for over a decade, they are more relevant than ever.

If you combine them with other trends and innovations, such as interactive content and motion graphics, you will present more interesting and engaging material to your audience.

Given that, an interactive infographic can boost your marketing campaigns.

Considering that infographics can be the most engaging type of content, as reported in 2018, it is important to get to know and use them in your marketing strategies.

In this article, we are going to explain what an interactive infographic is, why it is important for digital marketing strategies, and what its advantages are.

We will also show you types of interactive infographics, as well as how to make and use them in content marketing. Let’s dive into it!

What is an Infographic?

The Cambridge Dictionary defines infographic as “a picture or diagram or a group of pictures or diagrams showing or explaining information.” In other words, an infographic presents information and statistics using visual content to make it easier to understand a topic.

Infographics help you to keep your prospects interested (because images are more appealing than text) and allow them to comprehend any kind of information faster.

Therefore, you can explain complex topics, knowing that you’ll increase the chances of your audience consuming the content and learning from it, compared with plain text.

What are infographics for?

Why use an infographic? The short answer is: to summarize a large amount of data in a visually compelling way. Then, you make your content easy to understand and digest.

Think about it: if the brand wants to publish a survey result, for instance. It’s a whole lot of data for your prospects to read at once. When you insert them in your infographic, it’s way easier.

The long answer? To increase awareness, educate prospects, engage them, and simplify processes for an audience.

Awareness

That media is often used to boost awareness. Since it’s a piece that blends images, graphics, animation, and text, it’s very shareable and easy to go viral. So you have a great chance of contacting new users that had never heard of your company before. More people knowing you exist means more chances to generate leads. It also means more traffic.

Education

Education is also a common purpose. Sometimes, you want to teach prospects the most important topics about a subject. That means summarizing stuff you need them to know. If that’s the case, your team can make use of an infographic. By listing points in a structured way, you get their eyes to flow through the content and go everywhere you want.

Engagement

That engages people even more than a static, traditional, long blog post. Back to the survey example: the number of stats can make your article confusing and busy.

Readers may get distracted, and if they need to stop, it may be hard to get back. It takes too much time and gets them tired while processing all this information. In this case, there is only a limited set of options to highlight those points that are most relevant to them as well. So, the reading experience is boring and unattractive. 

When switching to an infographic, you open the doors to engagement. You get the audience into the content, welcomingly. It’s a comfortable way of reading something since everything is well-designed. 

Outlining important information with that kind of piece is easier as well. Your team can do that by summarizing a post, as we’ve mentioned, or simply by highlighting the most important topics with different colors and sizes.

What Is the Importance of Infographics for Digital Marketing Strategies?

According to a study conducted by Content Marketing Institute, in 2018, the usage of images, including infographics, in marketing campaigns increased by 63% compared with the previous year.

That being said, a company that does not follow this trend risks lagging behind its competitors.

In addition to that, the same study showed that 66% of B2C marketers always or frequently prioritize the informational needs of the audience over the promotional message.

In this context, infographics allow you to provide useful and quality content, contributing to the creation of relevant and valuable marketing content.

For these reasons, it is essential to find creative ways to include infographics in your marketing strategies to differentiate your business, keep it relevant in the market, and educate your audience, in order to fulfill their needs and add value to your brand.

What Types of Infographics Are There?

Static Infographic

This is the most traditional type of infographic. It presents a static image with a large amount of text. Because of this, it requires organization and planning to decide what information will be added to it, to prevent the reader from getting confused while reading it.

Animated Infographic

The animated infographic is very similar to the static one. However, the difference is that some visual elements can move, which is helpful in illustrating the text, drawing attention to the most important concepts, or demonstrating actions if the infographic presents a tutorial, for example.

The process to create this type of content is more complex and requires more resources and technical knowledge.

Motion Graphic

This type of infographic is very similar to a video. It is presented in the video format, often hosted on platforms such as Vimeo and YouTube, but it contains animated images and graphs instead of live-action. Most of them are 30 to 60 seconds long.

As in the animated infographic, the production of this one requires technical knowledge.

The motion graphic is the ideal option if you want to offer a guided experience — although it is possible to skip parts, rewind, or fast-forward, you determine in which order the pieces of information will be displayed.

Statistical Infographic

Static or not, statistical infographics explore visual content to present data based on researches, analytic reports, and so on.

In marketing campaigns, you can use them to address your audience’s problems and present the impact of your company’s actions, for example.

Interactive Infographic

Interactive infographics allow the audience to click or drag specific elements of the image.

It is ideal for your company if you want to include more than images in your content, combining features of different types of infographics, such as animation and motion graphics, or adding other components, such as hyperlinks, for example.

Its creation also requires a high technical level due to its complexity.

It is by far the most interesting type of infographic because it makes it possible to use several features at the same material and gives the audience full control of how the content will be consumed.

How to Make an Interactive Infographic

To help you create an interactive infographic that achieves the goals of your marketing campaigns, we’ve listed a few tips below.

1. Define Your Goals

It may sound obvious, but it is important to reinforce it: if you want your interactive infographic to be successful, you have to set your goals.

Think about what you want to accomplish with this material, define your persona, decide on which problems you will address, how you can help, and in which platform your infographic will run.

All these questions are important to create content that is relevant to your persona and capable of helping to achieve the expected results of your campaign. Besides that, you will find out what are the best places to publish it.

2. Keep It Short and Simple

The main goal of an interactive infographic is to present relevant information in a concise and engaging format. Long texts are not appropriate for this kind of content.

3. Avoid Content That Requires Zoom In to Be Read

If it is necessary to zoom in the image to read the text and figures, consider removing part of the content or changing your structure. It makes the reader’s experience uncomfortable and unpractical.

4. Use Storytelling

As you probably already know, storytelling has been widely used in marketing to create more involving campaigns. When this technique is applied to a marketing campaign, it is possible to establish a deeper connection with the audience — they will feel more engaged with your brand because of the story you tell.

To apply storytelling to an interactive infographic, set up an overall narrative and organize your subtopics, making it possible to lead your readers through a visual path.

Thus you can reach their emotions and intellect, depending on the subject, enabling more engagement.

5. Strive for Accuracy

People can easily fact-check your data, so, make sure to present accurate information. Doing this, you ensure your brand’s credibility and prevent the spread of false information.

6. Make Sure That the Page Is Responsive

An interactive infographic requires more resources than static ones. Considering that your audience may use laptops, smartphones, or tablets to access your content, make sure that the page will work well regardless of the device used to display it.

7. Use Different Font Styles

Both text and image are equally important in interactive infographics. However, the text determines the level of importance of each piece of information.

Therefore, an appropriate infographic must have a textual hierarchy composed of at least three different font styles for the basic sections — main header, section header, and body text.

8. Use Visual Elements to Indicate the Ideal Path to Read the Content

Although the reader can freely move through your content, indicating the ideal path to read it — with lines, shapes, borders, different colors, and so on — is a good practice.

If you utilize storytelling, this is vital in ensuring that your audience will understand the narrative.

9. Use an Online Platform

Some online platforms offer resources to facilitate the creative process when it comes to the technical aspects. They allow you to use templates that only require replacing text, images, and colors, for example.

You can also use software that were designed specifically to create infographics.

How to Use Interactive Infographics in Content Marketing?

Optimize Landing Pages

To immediately catch your prospect’s attention after he read one of your marketing pieces, you can place an interactive infographic on your landing page.

The experience on this page will be improved, because you will present selected information and allow your prospects to explore it freely, encouraging them to advance naturally in the buyer’s journey.

As a result, you establish a relationship with your audience without imposing your brand, giving it a reason to stay on your website, which is helpful to increase conversion rates.

Divert Traffic From Social Media

Another possibility to use an interactive infographic is to post its link on your company’s pages on social media. First of all, it is a good strategy to target a larger amount of people, considering the number of social media users: 3.5 billion.

Besides that, after making your prospects navigate away from social media, it is easier to keep them on your website if you offer an engaging experience.

With interactive infographics, you can teach them about a topic or help them to solve a problem.

What Are the Advantages of Interactive Infographics?

Increase Engagement and Conversion

Prospects are allowed to assume an active role while reading an interactive infographic. In addition to that, since information is the key factor in this kind of content, they receive something valuable to them, which proves your brand’s value.

Therefore, the experience is more engaging, which makes your audience to advance in the buyer’s journey, leading to higher conversion rates.

In one of DHL’s landing pages, there is a lead capture form. Below it, they present information to convince the prospect that they offer the best shipping solutions.

Without leaving the page, the prospect can find out details about DHL services and fill in the form.

Grab Attention and Easily Go Viral

Some people close the tab at their web browser right after seeing a block of text, no matter how catchy and interesting the title sounds. Interactive infographic, however, prevents that from happening, encouraging the audience to stay.

Since interactive infographics make easier to understand the topic, the prospects will probably feel motivated to read it until the end. In addition to that, the content is interesting and useful, so it is more likely to be shared on social media.

A good example is a holiday campaign landing page of Tony Robbins Research.

With the heartwarming title “Create a wonderful life: Open your heart and discover the holiday spirit,” the brand suggests different possible actions to the prospect — shop, get help from an interactive quiz to pick Christmas gifts, or donate money to a philanthropic campaign — with minimum text.

The prospect can choose which action suits him the best, or simply get to know the brand better before taking action.

Make Your Content More Understandable

As we already mentioned, infographics are a very good way to explain complex topics because the visual elements illustrate the concepts and make them easier to understand.

Therefore you can use interactive infographics to educate your public about your services or products. Splitting the subject in small bits and associating them with visual elements can help your prospects to get to know your company’s services quickly.

Hightail used this tactic on its landing page. In the middle of the page, the company explains how its services can be used by different professionals. 

Wrap Up

After learning everything about interactive infographics — including their definition, advantages, types, ways to create them, and their use in content marketing —you are ready to improve your marketing campaigns and increase conversion rates.

Interested in more examples of interactive infographics? Visit here and access some live materials produced with the Ion platform.