Why You Should Convert PDFs to Webpages or Online Forms

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People on a train looking at their mobile phones

PDFs are "portable document formats" and a great way to share a document such as a Microsoft Word document in a way that ensures other people can read it. But PDFs aren't great for the web, and here's why.

Why PDFs Are Problematic Online

  1. Depending on your content management system (e.g. Drupal or WordPress) and integrations, PDFs can be harder to search in the global site-wide search. Note that Upanup has many ways to help with this and please contact us if you have any questions.
  2. PDFs are very hard to read on smaller devices such as smartphones. This means that it isn't ideal for online user experience
  3. If PDFs are forms requiring it to be printed, scanned, then mailed or scanned/emailed, then this can be problematic for several reasons—for example, many people don't have access to a printer.
  4. PDFs are not very web accessible. And even if you make your document more accessible, when someone opens it in a web browser like Chrome or Safari, it will default to open in the browser's PDF reader, which doesn't take into account any accessibility changes made to the document. 

Why Switching to a Webpage or Online Form is Better

Converting your PDF to a webpage or web form will make it more searchable, more mobile-friendly, easier for online user experience, and more web accessible. 

Wondering how to convert PDFs to web pages or web forms? Contact us to get an audit or quote for helping with this work.