The Excessive Use of PDFs

In E-mails & on Web Sites

As Dreaded E-mail Attachments

Each week the elementary school sends at least one e-mail with a variety of PDF files attached. Those files remind us of nothing more than electronic barnacles that create friction on the internet and waste space on hard drives. (It’s not the only violator, just the most recent.)

Usually those separate files–which must be saved and opened, or at least opened–are simple announcements from the school or from one of the parents’ associations. There is no compelling reason why those simple, text announcements could be easily incorporated into the e-mail message. That action would save each of the 300-or-so families at the school a decent amount of time every week.

Now, such a change might seem trivial–if you are not the one opening the PDFs. In addition, such a change might be inefficient if it overly-burdened the sender, but eliminating most or all of the PDFs requires nothing more that one person opening the file and copying-and-pasting the text into the message. In this case, the process is so easy that for each attached file, the cost:benefit ratio is about 1:300, and that is a nice efficiency gain.

Actually, that minor cost could be completely eliminated if the e-mail sender requested that the announcement be sent to them as e-mail messages, rather than as PDFs.

Of course, if such files are more than informational, if they are electronic versions of paper forms, then it may be inconvenient to incorporate those forms into the message’s body. BUT, if those forms are routine, then rather than having each recipient open, print, and fill-in the paper form, the sender could direct the reader to an on-line form to complete.

In this case, forcing 300 families to print a page isn’t particularly green, cheap or convenient. It is not green because it wastes paper and ink. It is not cheap because it wastes paper and ink. It is not convenient because it requires printing, walking to the printer, retrieving the form, completing it, and, in this case, ensuring that the child returns it to the school. (In other cases, a stamp and envelope are required.)

On a well-designed web-site, such forms can be easily replaced with their electronic equivalents: simple; easy-to-use; click, click, click, and you’re done. They surprisingly affordable to generate and edit.

When we have mentioned similar phenomenon to other organizations and clients, we usually get a response, like, “you don’t understand, we have 30 different forms.”

Not-so-close inspection usually reveals thirty sheets of paper in different fonts and lay-outs collecting about 95% of the same information. Often, all of those forms can be compressed into one or two on-line versions with different drop-down subjects, etc. Of course, like just about any other computer file, once an on-line form is created, it can be copied and edited to create a similar, derivative form.

At one organization we were able to nearly eliminate the need to print paper versions of registration forms. Besides improving the customer experience, that change has substantially improved the efficiency of collecting and aggregating data. No need to retype the data into an Excel spreadsheet when it can be downloaded from an on-line database or can be automatically sent (via email) to relevant parties.

By the way, in December we wrote about the problems with using e-mail as the firm’s or organization’s central information system. You can read about it here: Inexpensive but Valuable Web-base MIS.

On Web Sites

There are times when only the PDF version of a file will do. However, being forced to click a link on a web site to read text through a PDF viewer or browser add-in or to download a form is very inefficient for web site visitors and neither effective nor efficient for the site’s owner.

It’s cheap, it looks that way, and, most importantly, it turns away visitors. That’s because many visitors won’t download or open such files so, they never see what you have to say. Moreover, for those performing web searches, many potential visitors don’t become actual visitors because as soon as they see “PDF” in the search result, they start scanning downward for the next result.

Except for certain special materials, like, say, material that you are only allowed to disseminate as a PDF file–e.g., some academic journal articles or legal documents–anything that can be communicated within a PDF file can also be communicated in a web page, and no knowledge of html or any other computer language is required.

If you can do it in MS Word, you can do it with a good content management system. Not only are you likely to get more hits from within search results, but you are also likely to have an increased potential for hits because it is much easier to search-engine-optimize content on web pages rather than in PDFs.

Of course, if PDF file content is converted into web page content, there is no rule that prohibits posting the PDF file, too. (In addition, there are a number of free web plugins that allow visitors to convert web pages into PDF files–if you like that kind of thing.)

While some (obstinate) readers, may not consider this to be the most pressing of causes, it is one that is simple to implement and beneficial to all parties involved.

If you would like examples or demonstrations of on-line forms, please download this PDF form, complete it, and mail it to us. Just kidding, please contact us, instead.