SmartSymbols^tm

A way to find out what readers are interested in is to look at the Icon Usage chart in SmartSymbols Analytics. (See picture below).
To get to the chart, simply login and then select the SmartSymbols set you are interested in.

(Click the chart to enlarge the picture)

This simple pie chart shows some pretty valuable information: people who were researching this particular sample book spent most of their time on Author Information (over 12 minutes) and almost equal amount of time on Social Networking buzz (about 9 minutes). The Book Content captured their interest for half the time of either Author Information or Social Networking buzz.

There is another interesting data point in the chart: people spent almost as much time researching the location of the plot of the book (Location/Compass icon - read more on Compass icon usage here) as on the contents of the book. In fact location seem to be of more interest then Reviews and News.

It could be that adding illustrations from the book to your SmartSymbols, as well as pictures of the places where the book is taking place could become a tipping point in the sale process of this particular book.

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“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” -Steve Jobs


Boris Evelson from Forrester Research wrote a great summary on “How to differentiate advanced data visualisation solutions“. It’s clear, specific and to the point - great resource and a check list.

Also, I recently saw a great presentation by Stephen Anderson, “Eye Candy IS A Critical Business Requirement“. It explains, very convincingly, why design details are so critical not only to how the product looks, but how it functions.

These articles, combined with Steve Job’s famous quote and the teachings of Edward Tufte always make me stop and think every time I create any kind of chart, picture, or any type of data visualization.

Source: Edward Tufte’s Website

All this reminds me that it is so critical to have our diagrams, icons and fonts created in such way that they are just fun to look at and explore. This is critical - they have to be fun to explore. If they are not - it does not matter how efficiently we compress data into the diagrams, charts and dashboards: if people don’t explore our visualizations, they will not find that data, thus rendering our efforts useless.

Do our data visuazations convey a simple message or are they just fancy-looking but useless? In other words: “what would Tufte say?”. Although he probably won’t say anything good, I found this exercise useful. It makes me do three things. First, it makes me ask other people to review my visualizations. Second, it makes me do more research on how a particular problem has been solved before. And third, it forces me take another look, and try to simplify or even re-work the diagrams again and again.

I think this is one of the rare cases when doubt is good, it makes you better while pursuing simplicity and clarity.

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Here is a picture of a “purring engine” of a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. It is well done: a simple picture for a simple message, executed perfectly (found on Plan59.com).

Click to enlarge



What other information or a message that is typically considered non-visual can we convey graphically? I think the sky is the limit.

Here are some thoughts, with examples and without. (Click on the pictures to enlarge, the actual visualization is not what you might think at first):

• Reliability
  [DON'T HAVE AN EXAMPLE, e-mail me at stas dot antons at smartsymbols dot com if you have one]
• Vision (Video - 2019)
  
  Click to enlarge
• Expertise (Visual Resume)
  
  Click to enlarge
• Scale (A LOT of toothpicks)
  
  Click to enlarge and scroll down

Bottom line - visualization of non-visual things, is the best way to convey the essence and the spirit of the message.

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SmartSymbols offers a Compass icon, it looks like this: (here is the link to a larger subset ).

There are many good ways you can use it - show where your dealers are located, or where your book’s plot is taking place via Google Maps.

But there is another way you can use Compass icon - highlight the neat places where your product is being used. It could be particularly powerful if the location is distant and interesting - it allows your visitor’s mind explore and wander, it adds a completely different aura to your product.


Here is What I Mean
Find out (or if you know this - that’s even better!) if there is an expedition in some exotic location, and one of the explorers is using your product, be it a camera, a jacket or a book. For example: if you make cameras - maybe Discovery’s Blue Planet has been using it in some of their most interesting diving locations?

If you build cars - are they delivering humanitarian supplies somewhere to someone in need? And of course, if you write travel books - what is so great about the places you are writing about, show us some pictures, highlights, historical facts - something - but only when we ask. (That is one of the wonderful things about interactive icons approach )


Interactive Maps
Of course you can embed interactive maps into the Compass icon, Google Maps for example. The neat thing about Google Maps is that you can overlay destination information, such as photographs. Here is an example of a photo set from Carcassonne.



The beauty of this approach is that all this information is hidden behind the Compass icon, and it is only displayed to the website visitor when s/he is looking for it, which is the very foundation of permission marketing.

Takeaway
Compass icon can be a strong customer engagement tool if you use it creatively. Yes, you can display dealer locations and retailer outlets where your product is sold. But don’t stop there - use this powerful technology to extract your visitors from mundane minutia of the day and carry them to exotic places, connect them to interesting people and build product associations that last.

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“Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.”
-Jean-Paul Sartre:


When people come to our e-comm websites we want them to stay and buy the stuff we sell. And in our dreams they behave the way they supposed to: they come to our site, look at our products, select the one the like most, and buy it. In other words, our conversion funnel ideally should look more like a straight pipe. (That proper, dream-like behavior is documented in the diagram below.)

Click to enlarge



But our dreams are often brutally crushed by our visitors’ “incorrect” behavior: instead of staying on the site and buying stuff, they wander off to do “research”: they look at reviews, forums, Facebook and Twitter, and do other things that make them leave our site. And once they are gone off, it is so painfully hard to bring them back! No wonder I called that diagram the “The Curse of the Conversion Funnel” (see below).


Click to enlarge



I believe that the goal of e-business sites is simple - keep the visitor on the site until the purchase is made.

How can we accomplish this?

The solution is to bring all the outside activities (a.k.a “research”), into our website. If we do that, our e-biz property will look like the diagram below.

Click to enlarge



Notice that the last diagram is awfully close to the first - “dream” - diagram. In addition, most research activities that a visitor performs are the same, but the big difference is that now we are providing the info the visitor wants when she wants it, and where she wants it. Consequently the visitor never leaves us. In other words - if we could structure our e-comm site just like in the last diagram, we would accomplish our goal.


There is another point to be made here. If you just compare the complexity of the the two diagrams, our visitor’s life is now a lot simpler. And being an online shopper myself I would certainly choose the simplified and the quickest path to my purchase, as long as I feel that I am making an informed decision.

Wouldn’t you?

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Seeing and Observing
One of the most important things that Sherlock Holmes taught us is that seeing and observing are two different things.

Our goal however far more challenging: not only do we need to make all our customers as observant as Sherlock Holmes, we also need to make them understand the entire “case” quickly, in 1-3 minutes if possible.

How can we do that? A good start is taking an approach that is 180 degrees opposite of the one taken by Mr. Holmes’ foes: we have to make things clear, so the customers do not need to have special powers in order to figure out what is the story behind the product. The case should be opened, and closed quickly.

The beauty of this approach is that we actually do not need to tell the entire case right then and there, we just need to give visitors enough confidence so they know that additional details are available for the asking, right then and there.

When we present our product and its story clearly, our potential customer will feel like Sherlock, without spending time trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, i.e. without being a Sherlock. It is, in fact, our job to be a Sherlock and weave the entire product picture into a coherent and logical story.

The way things look, just seeing a product soon will not be enough. To stay competitive, we will need to give our customers enough clear info in a concise format, allowing them to come, glance and observe what we are trying to tell them.

Why am I talking about this?
Why do I dwell on this once again? Because of my fascination with conveying key information through visualization. Pictures allow a reader to zero-in on a specific area of a product or service quicker, because we can reduce complex and multi-dimensional message to a visual representation of the essentials that can be absorbed at a glance. Now, I realize that this is not entirely true - observer of a picture is more likely to notice only the part of the picture that make sense - but that is precisely the point: the more simple messages we can pack into a smallest amount of real estate that can be observed quickly, the more likely we are to give our reader information that is relevant to his or her needs.

The good news is that as soon the relevant information is noticed - we have established a rapport with a potential customer. And as soon as we established this connection, we are communicating, which is different from pitching.

The key is to have the depth behind the original “hook” (if we don’t - it’s bait-and-switch, and a customer is gone), but the depth can be facilitated and given to a customer when the it is asked for, which is the very foundation of permission marketing.

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At least in marketing, pictures are better than words. By “better” I mean more effective: higher impact, greater stickiness and higher conversion rate (a metric that cannot be ignored these days, for the future belongs to it).
Many people have explained the reasons why pictures are better. I would venture to say that it is almost self-evident, provided that the craftsmanship behind the picture is on-par with the power of the words that are designed to convey the message.

In fact, I would say that even when we pitch verbally (as in an elevator pitch) we are often advised to use analogies. Analogies, however, are nothing but a mental picture of what a product or a service does, a summary of its features, benefits and applicability.

So what? Well, the problem is - we are not using visualization as often as we should. At least I don’t.  The All-time Visualization Guru Edward Tufte explained why it is so: “displaying complex information is hard work” he said in Envisioning Information.  Tufte also went on to add that just because things are transformed into a picture they do not need to be dumbed-down: “clarity and simplicity are completely opposite simple-mindedness”.

So, even if we do not always have time to convert our message into a picture, it might be a worthwhile exercise to see if its mental picture is clear and simple.

Or, maybe we should make time and create that diagram or a picture that shows exactly what we want, so our customers can get our message on the first try

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