With a motto of “online charts. made simple,” online startup iCharts [1] is offering publishers the ability to create interactive charts to embed in online content.

“The value of online content is shifting toward work that is easily linked, manipulated, annotated, tagged, highlighted, translated, and enlivened by other media,” said Seymour Duncker, CEO of iCharts. The goal of iCharts, Duncker said, is to make content searchable—particularly for niche audiences that are most likely to seek out targeted information—and keep users on the page longer.

While Duncker declined to discose traffic figures, iCharts makes its charts “discoverable” by search engines, which he said increases traffic wherever these charts are used. The service can also supply branded landing pages for Web viewers that discover charts through search engines.

Currently, iCharts’ largest publishing client is Springer Science and Business Media, based in Germany, in addition to a stable of bloggers. However, iCharts “recently signed up additional publishers in print who are using this service for online, as well as pure play online publishers,” Duncker said.

The influential TechCrunch blog also uses this service [example here [2]], along with Business Insider [3], which is set to adopt iCharts over the next few weeks.

DIY Chart Creation

While online chart creation is not a new concept, the ability to quickly create a chart on the fly by entering numerical data, or by converting an Excel spreadsheet into an interactive chart, is. “There are companies that provide Flash charts,” said Duncker, “but these require a programmer, which can be costly and time consuming.” Each chart has its own embed code that can easily be inserted into an online article.

While Duncker would not disclose a price for this service due to the nature of its “custom deals,” he said that it is “a subscription service and available at a low entry point.”