Big data is the latest buzzword promising to take businesses to the next level, but how does it work? It starts with your raw data—words, numbers and calculations patiently awaiting utilization—which all contain endless variations of strategic information. Yes, raw data is the key to unlocking best practices for your brand, but without understanding how to examine and share this data, it’s essentially useless. Data visualization is the practice of taking raw data and deciphering it for action, rendering useful information for your brand and catapulting your company’s user insights from surface-level to intimate.

Why invest time and resources into data visualization?

1.  Data Visualization Engages the Senses

The first thing visualizing your data accomplishes is engaging your audience. What’s the use of gathering this information if you can’t clearly share it with your peers and organization?  Studies show that approximately 65% of people are visual learners, and a major part of the brain is devoted to being an image processor.  When using visualization as opposed to auditory explanation, it engages the recipient’s senses and furthermore makes it easier to remember.  How many times have you ran into someone you know and think, “I remember the face—but not the name?” Being able to visualize the information being provided give the user clearer insight on the information being provided.

2.  Data Aids in Finding Relationships

Data visualization helps identify areas that your company might not even know it’s struggling in.  While tools like Adobe or Google Analytics may show a big picture view of your data, many times the problem area is in the details.

In addition to finding issues, you can also spot trends and patterns that can help you allocate resources, time, and money into the right places for your business.  This also enables your company to make key decisions with actual data to back up your claims and provide reassurance.

3.  Data Visualization Promotes Problem Solving

Ultimately, the greatest service data visualization can provides is problem solving.  Sometimes, knowing or hearing about an issue isn’t enough to fully trigger a solution—whereas visualized data gives insight into where the problem lies and where it doesn’t.  Concrete, tangible data typically gives rise to meaningful conversations and generates enough motivation to fix an issue than conversations had without the support of data.

IN SHORT

In a time of big data providing more lines of information than we can possibly look at individually, data visualization provides us with an essential shortcut to solving problems as they arise, and even more so—discovering them before they do.  How is your brand implementing data visualization?