Infographics have been growing in popularity in recent years both with website designers and Internet users. From 2010 to 2012, search volume for infographics increased by 800%.

That’s quite the jump, but it happened for good reason. Infographics can improve a website in a number of powerful ways.

What Are Infographics?

Before we get into what makes infographics so awesome, let’s talk about what exactly they are. An infographic is, basically, a visual representation of information. It combines images and text in a way that makes information nicer to look at and easier to understand. They frequently include statistics, as well as icons or cartoon images.

Infographics can be found on all sorts of websites from news to business to entertainment sites. Using them on a site can provide a lot of benefits both for the site’s creator and the people who use it.

Encourage Shares

Infographics are easily shareable and look great pretty much no matter where you post them. In fact, they are liked and shared three times more than any other kind of content on social media. Visuals tend to perform well on social media sites. Infographics give you the opportunity to combine the power of visuals with the advantages of text.

Finding a topic you think people would want to share isn’t an easy task. It’s best to determine what type of information will benefit your target audience and then decide how to create it in a visual way. Happify created an infographic on worries and how to leave them behind. This is definitely a relatable topic for everyone and encourages engagement.

When people share you infographic on social media, it will drive more traffic to your site and expose more people to your brand. While you’ll probably a major spike in shares when you first put out an infographic, people will continue to share long after you created it, creating long-term, as well as short-term, benefits.

Improve SEO

Visually presented information can also bring visitors to your site through search engines. Because infographics are so accessible and tend to provide useful data and information, they tend to get a high number of backlinks, which boosts search engine rankings.

Google and other search engines love infographics, because they tend to naturally receive their links, social shares and drive website traffic.

These rankings are important, because Internet users often start off their browsing sessions with a visit to a search engines and tend not to stray too far from the top results. Needless to say, ranking well on search engines can be vital to the success of a website.

Help Concisely Convey Information

Graphics are a fantastic way to break down information and make it easier to digest and understand. Keep in mind that 65% of people are visual learners. That means that for most people, it’s much easier to get a grasp on something if it’s explained with images as opposed to big blocks of text.

For example, take this infographic about the benefits of direct mail marketing. Mail Shark acknowledges the consumers’ perspectives and goes through the facts in a concise and memorable way. Their audience is able to take in all of the information and remember the content’s purpose, which is to not disregard this traditional form of marketing.

People will also be able to process the information on your webpage much faster if it’s presented with visuals. This can be crucial to getting people to stay on your site. If visitors can’t quickly determine what a site is about, they often click away and try another one. People can comprehend visuals 60,000 times faster than text, which is why infographics are an ideal way to convey information.

Make Your Site More Eye-Catching

Infographics aren’t just extremely practical. They also look awesome! People prefer using websites that are visually appealing and may leave a site if it’s not, especially if it looks cluttered and confusing.

Infographics provide a simple way to organize information in an attractive way. The require you to break text up with imagery which makes it much easier to process and understand.

Increase Credibility

A well-designed infographic can cause visitors to see your website as more credible. A visual that’s well put together looks professional and shows that you invested time into getting your message across.

The Logo Company put together a lovely infographic about typography and the different terminology associated with it. This guide not only proves that typography is important but it also boosts the company’s credibility as an important source for logos and fonts.

With an infographic, you’re also putting all of your information out in the open and encouraging people to access and share it. If you cite your sources in your infographics, you’ll appear even more credible.

Tips for Creating and Using Infographics

If you’re convinced that you website needs some infographics, follow these tips to get started.

• Make them easy to share

One of the most useful attributes of infographics is how easily they can be shared and how well they perform when they are. Make sure visitors can share your creations with a simple click in order to get the most out of your graphics.

• Emphasize images

If you have to choose between more images or more text, choose images. People tend to spend more time looking at the graphics than reading the text on a webpage. Minimal text will make them more visually appealing and probably easier to understand as well.

• Get creative

Infographics are a perfect opportunity for exercising your creative muscles. Have fun with it and make it interesting to viewers. Come up with a few ideas for your graphic and choose the one that grabs your attention the most and that makes you the most excited to share it.

• Keep it simple

It can be tempting to try pack as much into an infographic as you can, especially once you get those creative juices flowing. However, they’re most effective when they’re kept relatively simple. Infographics that are cluttered or confusing won’t work. People should be able to see them and understand them quickly.

Infographics are newly one of the most popular ways for website designers, marketers, businesses and others to convey information online. They can help people to quickly and accurately understand what you’re trying to convey and drive more traffic to your site as well.

Lexie Lu is a designer and writer. She loves researching trends in the web and graphic design industry. She writes weekly on Design Roast and can be followed on Twitter @lexieludesigner.