PDFs are perfect for saving online purchase receipts, press-ready contents, and creating documents you want to print. However, the format has many limitations and isn’t suitable for content you intend to use for your customers or business prospects, such as white papers, ABM assets, or brochures. The format isn’t optimized for mobile viewing and may not be fulfilling to many users. Similarly, it also has a poor user experience. Here are some reasons you may think otherwise.
Reasons You Should Stop Using PDF for Business Content
- Not Mobile-friendly
Using PDFs on a mobile device is a tedious process. First, your prospect needs a space in their file manager to download and read your content, and the documents are often large. Similarly, the text takes ages to load and display on the screen, and then reading through it brings the challenge of consistently zooming in and out to capture every word. Similarly, PDF documents make it difficult for users to share their suggestions or changes.
- Doesn’t Support Assisted Technologies
The widespread and commonly used assistive technology, like screen readers, do not pair well with PDF format. As a result, sharing information in this layout may mean cutting off a large volume of the world’s population of the tech-savvy impaired individuals who depend on assisted technology to access services and information.
- Poor User Experience
Business processes ought to be pretty frictionless, a feature that PDFs don’t allow. First, the user has to discontinue what they’re doing to read the content. Again, PDFs are offline documents, meaning the user must download, sign, upload, and then send them to you again. The process is lengthy and can easily cause you to lose the opportunity.
- Inability to track reader engagement
Today’s business world requires measuring every marketing action to achieve your goals and reach the right audience. It would help if you had a medium that allows you to see the user’s engagements, favorite pages, and topics and click links. Collecting this data enables you to understand if the content is performing and where you need to optimize. You also get a chance to implement personalized follow-up and user scoring. However, PDFs completely lack the feature to help you gather information on user engagement.
- Difficult to share
Users typically share the content they deem helpful or interesting to hundreds of their friends on social media platforms. This trend has helped websites to reach thousands of users across the internet. However, PDF limits your access to such an opportunity. A minimal number of users will often send the documents to others. Even so, they may only share with a fraction of their colleagues, depending on the size of the file.
- Slow You Down
In a digital transformation world where businesses are moving swiftly and users have advanced demands for higher quality services, PDF doesn’t set you at the pace. The long process that comes with accessing information in the format, sharing, and signing the contracts makes it unfit to deliver and causes your business to stagger.
When creating any digital content, it’s essential to reflect on the user’s experience. As a result, think of creating highly immersive content that works perfectly on any device. If you must use PDFs, ensure that the document supports all types of users and retain its control. Tools like Adobe Acrobat for PDF viewer or editor can improve the access and user experience. You may also consider password protect PDFs to maintain control of your documents.
