Today Malaysia-based Piktochart, a web-based tool that let users create their own infographics and presentations, announced that it will releasing version 2.0 for the free edition and later this year for the pro edition. The company launched its first iteration in 2012, and to date has 170,000 users on its free platform and 4,000 paid subscribers for its pro account.
Co-founder and CEO Ai Ching Goh spoke with BetaKit about the new updates and how Piktochart stacks up against other infographic editors in the market. “We launched the platform as an MVP [minimum viable product] in March [2012]…we knew we had to launch a version two to follow up and took most of the feedback and on top of that added features that our users would find more useful,” said Goh. “There are a couple of infographic editors out there right now, we’re mainly geared toward one of two verticals. One is more focused on strictly data visualization…we come come from the other school of thought. We see infographics as a different sort of presentation…that’s actually what our target users have been about.”
She went on to further break down the 4,000 paying users as typically being in the social media, PR, SEO and marketing departments of SMEs in North America who don’t necessarily care for the nitty-gritty of the various theories behind visualizing statistics, but instead wanted to make a different type of presentation. To help them build better presentations it will be launching the new version with a more centralized repository of graphics, more than 5,000 for pro users, with more than 100 available themes.
The other trend it wanted to keep up with was HTML5, so with the new version users will be able to embed hyperlinks into content in addition to being able to add multiple tabs and split content into different sections to make infographics more interactive. They’re also trying to make it easier to embed and share infographics created on the platform through Facebook, embeddable HTML code, in addition to sharing the image file. For the time being it will still continue to charge $29 per month for its pro account that gives users access to its entire library of templates, while offering a free account that includes access to three templates with the company’s logo.
The infographic space continues to heat up with other DIY infographic tools like Easel.ly and Infogram also looking to provide non-designers a means to create visual presentations. BetaKit also recently covered the launch of Visually’s Marketplace, which connects those looking to commission an infographic with those who can provide the design and research abilities to create them. The infographic discovery tool also has its own Create tool which lets users build infographics, however, as of now only from their Twitter and Facebook data. There are also startups like Venngage, which launched its data visualization tool in October to give marketers a better grasp on their data, that focus more on serving the enterprise space.
However, according to Goh, there’s still plenty of opportunity as the web increasingly becomes more visual over time. “The infographics space is still pretty new…we feel that the cake is only going to get bigger. It’s not about the slice you get right now, but really growing the cake together,” Goh added. It will take some time to see which service becomes a go-to platform for what is increasingly becoming an important part of a company’s communications strategy.