Your agency is full of numbers people. They like to interpret the hard data in Excel spreadsheets and pivot tables and pore over website analytics. Your numbers people don’t need pie charts to tell them what the numbers mean, but your clients are ideas people. Many of them need visuals to gauge the effectiveness of a campaign and understand the big picture.
Traditionally, these two types of people are at odds over the data, but data visualization can be the love child of your analytical minds and more visual learners.
The Benefits of Data Visualization
With the right tools, you can present data to clients in engaging, easy-to-understand reports that help you communicate better and show the true value of your efforts. Data visualization can:
- Minimize guesswork. Traditional analytics are great, but they only tell part of the story. Visualization tools allow you to easily see pain points that might be driving users to abandon a website.
- Validate design concepts. Following popular web design trends or creating your own might win kudos from other web designers, but it isn’t enough for clients anymore. They want proof that a new website design works better than the old one. Data visualization prevents you from falling in love with a cool idea that might not actually improve conversions and lets you show clients visually through data why something will or will not work.
- Differentiate your agency. There’s nothing more impressive than using real visitor recordings to show your clients a newly designed site in action. Being able to demonstrate the results of your work can help your agency differentiate itself and ultimately win more business.
The Best Tools to Show off Your Work
Visual data has the potential to transform numbers into tangible solutions, but some argue that visual data is too “surface level” or doesn’t take enough metrics into account. The best way to combat this risk is to use a number of different visualization tools.
Here are some of the best tools for analyzing the effectiveness of your work:
- Visitor recordings: Recordings instantly pull back the digital curtain and allow you to see what people are doing in real time. You can see how people interact with your design and the exact point at which they abandon the website.
- Form analytics: For sites that rely on customers filling out forms, this data is essential. Seeing where a customer gives up on a form can help you identify potential problems and improve conversions. You can even see how long it takes users to fill in each field.
- Conversion funnels: Conversion funnels give you a bird’s-eye view of where visitors drop off as they navigate the conversion process. When you know where users are leaving, you can work to optimize the site to reduce barriers to conversion.
- Heat maps: These give you valuable insights into mouse movement, scroll depth, and click maps. Essentially, heat maps can show you what a user’s mouse is doing. They can show where users click the most, how users read content, and even how far they scroll. Combine this information with visitor recordings, and you have a killer presentation to show potential clients how real users are interacting with their site.
These days, your clients are more results-driven than ever, which means your agency needs to find new ways to prove the value of its work. Data visualization is an excellent way to show your clients real ROI and eliminate the possibility that improved conversion rates are the result of chance or some other external factor. And, as an added bonus, engaging visuals will make your clients love data almost as much as your numbers people.
