Skip to main content
Home
Segal Benz

Search form

  • What We Do
    • Our Work
    • Who We Serve
  • About Us
    • Team
    • Press
    • Speakers
    • Industry Insights
    • Careers
  • Insights
    • Blog
    • Resources
    • Coronavirus Resources
    • Events
    • Our Approach
  • Contact
hamMENU

You are here

Segal Benz  >  Insights  >  Blog  >  Why Looks Matter: Highly Visual Communications Improve Engagement
September 11, 2019

Why Looks Matter: Highly Visual Communications Improve Engagement

Amber Riley
Communications Consultant

How many times have you heard someone say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? And despite that admonition, how often have you picked up a book, looked at the cover, and thought to yourself, “Looks boring. Must not be that interesting”? If we’re being honest here, this has probably happened to most of us—and more than once.

It’s no secret that adult attention spans are dwindling (we have technology to thank for that).1  Ever alert, marketers are attuned to the need for visuals to keep people engaged. Photos, icons, infographics, memes, charts, graphics, and more—they all help to attract and, more importantly, hold people’s attention. Research backs that up. According to the Social Science Research Network, 65% of us are visual learners. The takeaway? If you want someone to pay attention to the information you’re providing, looks matter.

[Here’s how the previous sentence might look, were we using visuals:]


Sources: Paul Martin Lester, “Syntactic Theory of Visual Communications,” 2006, and Harris Eisenberg, “Humans Process Visual Data Better,” Thermopylae Sciences, September 15, 2014.

With all this in mind, it’s important to remember that when it comes to benefit communications, we’re not just trying to capture our audience where they are; we’re also trying to engage people in topics that can be complicated to understand and remember.   

So, let’s look at how to leverage visuals in the who, what, when, where, and why of benefit communications:

Reviewing these concepts in a highly visual format helped you process the information quickly. And it’s more likely you’ll retain the information than if you’d read about it in multiple paragraphs of text. In fact, you probably would have stopped reading around sentence three. But when they were presented in a highly visual format, you quickly absorbed—and are likely to retain—some basic facts about visual communications and how they can support benefit communications.

Whether you’re driving an open enrollment campaign, creating a new benefits guide, or promoting a wellness program, when you increase the visual pleasure of what you are communicating, your people are more likely to engage, learn, understand, and ultimately take action.

No doubt the next time you review a benefit communication, you’ll remember—looks really do matter.

We're proud to work with organizations that value their people. If you want to learn more, we’d love to talk. 

1 Kevin McSpadden, “You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish,” Time, May 14, 2015.

Tagged in: 
Behavioral Science
User Experience
Branding & Design
Engagement
Read next: 
Effective Communications Are Built on How Employees Approach Information
5 Product Design Steps to Make Your Benefits Programs More Effective
Gorgeous Benefits Website Home Pages to Inspire Your Thinking

Get Email Updates

Find out instantly when we post new insights to the blog!

SUBSCRIBE

Explore & Learn

Explore our library of free resources

LET'S GO

Read next: 
Effective Communications Are Built on How Employees Approach Information
5 Product Design Steps to Make Your Benefits Programs More Effective
Gorgeous Benefits Website Home Pages to Inspire Your Thinking
  • What We Do
  • About Us
  • Insights
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • California Residents
  • Disclosure of Compensation

Work With Us

We partner with organizations that value their people first.

LET'S TALK

 

Meet the Family

We are proud to be part of the Segal family.

Segal | Segal Marco Advisors | Segal Canada

Segal Benz
180 Howard Street
Suite 1100
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-263-8200
© 2008–2023
LinkedIn Profile
Twitter Profile