Digital companies have been churning out the travel infographics lately. Exhibit A: US-based booking engine CheapOair which yesterday released an infographic that sums up consumer travel statistics for the week following July 4.
The infographic reports that Orlando jumped in popularity among Americans as a summer travel destination over Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Infographics are up to 40 times more likely to viewed and shared compared to text, according to Stew Langille, CEO and Co-Founder of Visual.ly, which not surprisingly is a start-up focused on helping businesses create infographics.
Langille is a former VP of marketing for Mint.com, which used to kill it with infographics under his watch.
So how well does CheapOair's infographic compare with the best infographics out there?
Cheap Flights to Orlando
Here's a subjective grading of the latest CheapOair infographic. This grading draws on the ideas laid out by Langille and by Mark Smiciklas, an expert on infographics and a digital strategist in Vancouver, BC:
Is the goal for the infographic clear?
It's not clear if CheapOair's goal was consumer awareness, branding, traffic, or inbound links for SEO. Different goals require different methods.
Focusing on the subject of your business, like CheapOair did, is usually a good strategy to achieve branding by maximizing views.
Creating an infographic on a fun topic that may be only tangentially related to your business can be a better way to attract inbound links. Exhibit A: Language-learning company Pimsleur's infographic about the Zombie Apocalypse.
While it is not about mastering foreign languages or using its products, the company's infographic attracted more than 170 inbound links and more than 160 tweets -- far more traction than CheapOair's effort so far.
CheapOair doesn't seem to have received a high number of either views or in-bound links, based on (admittedly imperfect) third-party tools like Alexa and TweetMeme.
CheapOair might have achieved more visibility had it submitted its infographic to the major promotion platforms, such as CoolInfographics, DailyInfographic. SubmitInfographics, and Visual Loop. The groups on Flickr devoted to infographics are also good to use.
Overall verdict: Grade B- for CheapOair's infographic. Interesting, factual information with a good embed box to encourage quick sharing via a variety of platforms. But it felt a bit like a data dump.
Using quarterly statistics on top travel destinations doesn't sufficiently separate CheapOair from the pack, which certainly must be a goal in an otherwise commodity-driven business of travel bookings.