What is an infographic? To put it simply, infographics are a graphic that gives information. Graphs, charts, pictures with statistics, even Venn diagrams are infographics. So, why do we use them? Infographics are a valuable tool to communicate a lot of information to your readers in a very short period of time. Infographics are also very striking and make a lasting impression on your audience. Since infographics are so valuable, I took some time to go out there and create infographics with some of the popular services. I used the same information on all of my graphics to show you the differences among the choices. View my results below to find your best infographic service!
Piktochart
The nice thing about Piktochart is that there are a ton of templates to choose from. I found the Piktochart experience to be the most customizable and user friendly of the three services that I am reviewing. I tried a lot more than three services, however. Piktochart does a wonderful job in making you feel as if you’re creating something that will have value. I was fortunate to find a resource that had a lot of Facebook statistics that I could use to create an Infographic to show you.
The User Experience
With Piktochart, I was able to load and create my entire infographic in a very short period of time. If you are a perfectionist like me, it’s very easy to make something that is attractive and crisp in under an hour. I found that my experience was smooth, as I had my source up and running in the background and was able to paraphrase my info into the infographic. The downside is that there is a small limitation that you’ll find on icons in the utility. It is, however, a web based utility that offers a lot of flexibility and doesn’t require any downloads to operate. I enjoyed that piece of the user experience. You are also able to download your infographic onto your computer, as opposed to being forced to share it to your social media to retrieve it. You also have to pay for the higher resolution download options.
Cost: Free, unless you want extras
There is a premium version that will allow some extra bells and whistles, but for a beginner or someone who doesn’t need anything too fancy, the free version will work just fine.
Canva
Canva is a widely used infographic and graphic maker. It contains a library of many different kinds of templates that you can search and use. However, it is a little bit frustrating if you can’t find the exact template that you’re looking for.
The User Experience
As a new user, I found the experience very intuitive. All of the tools and utilities were very easily view-able and accessible. The button format is also very intuitive. While I was navigating through the templates, it was difficult to find exactly what I was looking for, but I was able to re-appropriate a template for similar purposes. If you can’t find a free template, you may need to pay for something with far more detail.
Once you’ve found your template, you can add icons or remove them, or you can add or remove extra text. I chose to use the template pretty much as it was, but you can also change colors, or change fonts. Canva obviously puts a lot of effort into providing quality templates that require little to no work to make your own. I was using some pretty basic Facebook facts to fill out the graphic that I was putting together and had to alter very little. In fact, this infographic took just over 15 minutes of my time. Of course, I would recommend a little bit more customization to suit your business needs, but for my purposes, it worked beautifully.
Cost: Free for some templates, not for others
Canva works on a per-template basis. This means that you might find something that you like that you have to pay for. However, most templates can be tweaked and altered to give you something that you like.
Venngage
Venngage is another pretty basic, free infographic engine. I found that I liked the templates a little bit better than the other services, but I found a few things that frustrated.
The User Experience
I found Venngage to be a very simple user experience. This is basically a point and click environment where you can create what you need in a very short period of time. This is a great tool for the small business user. For my purposes, I was able to complete the infographic in just a few minutes. I personally prefer a little bit more detail, but Venngage allows customizable integration of charts and graphs into the infographic. For example, the bar graph that is included has actual data numbers that coincide. If you’re looking for something that will attract a lot of traffic, this definitely would work.
Cost: Free, but only if you want to share to your Socials
Venngage’s one downside is that you have to pay for downloadable graphics. If you only want to share to your Social Media accounts as a link, this works, but if you want to download your graphics and post as a picture, you will have to pay for a premium subscription.
Wrapping it all up
Infographics are incredibly useful to the small business owner. It is a method to create an attractive presentation of a lot of information in a small package. I found that Canva is my go-to for smaller projects, Piktochart is better for a lot of data that you need to cram into a small space, and Venngage is great if I’m only concerned about social media sharing. We have previously done an in depth review of one of these tools, and I found that review incredibly helpful in choosing tools for this article. After creating your infographic, you will, of course, want to share this information on your Social Media profiles. dlvr.it is a fantastic tool to distribute your infographic quickly and efficiently. Check out some of our previous infographics as well to find some fun examples of what infographics can do.
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