Replace PDF documents
The most common way to publish long, well-structured text content online is to upload PDF documents to websites. It is no coincidence: it is easy to produce and post these files, they only need to be replaced when updated, and, last but not least, the whole process requires no programming skills.
On the user side however, few things are more frustrating than finding the one piece of information you’re looking for in a long PDF file you’ve downloaded – on mobile the experience is even more dramatic.
The reason is simple: a file like this is supposed to be read from start to finish in a linear order, as the author has designed it. It is unsuitable for roaming around, jumping between parts that we are interested in.
Case study
“As a communications network present in sixteen countries in Central and Eastern Europe, we have long been concerned how we could get our specialised analyses to more professionals. In other words, how could we replace or complement our existing PDF-based annual regional advertising market report to improve customer reach and cost-effective communications. We finally found the solution in the Pressonline CMS platform.”
László Szarvas
Managing Director / weCAN Ltd.
weCAN is an affiliate network of 19 independent communication agencies of Central and Eastern Europe, founded in 2010 by three outstanding agencies based in the key markets of the region: Café Communications (Hungary), Comtech CAN (Czech Republic) and thegroup (Romania).
CANnual Report is the annual publication of weCAN, which includes the most comprehensive data and consumer trends of the advertising markets of the CEE region. It reveals how each country’s political, economic and social processes affect the local advertising industry, examines the sector in the light of diverse financial data, and introduces key marketers.
The CANnual Report was produced as a downloadable PDF file until 2022. In 2023, recognizing the declining reach despite the carefully edited, valuable and unique content, it was decided to move the publication to the online platform of Pressonline CMS to make it easier to search and update.
Based on the Pressonline CMS, weKNOW contains advertising market data and trends for the CEE region, supported by interactive infographics grouped by advertising market segments and countries. Each grouping and article is automatically displayed on a separate URL, with organic reach growth supported by the automatic integrated SEO service of the Pressonline CMS platform. The complete administration of weKNOW (uploading and updating content) is carried out by weCAN staff via the online administration system of the platform.
Many PDF contents work in this “wiki-like” way, just think of long research reports, annual reports, studies, market analyses or even product descriptions.
But PDFs also have disadvantages from the publishing side. Readers have to download these files with an immediate loss of conversion. The content of the documents is not visible to Google, so it does not contribute to the page’s SEO and search engine ranking, and of course, there is no trace of interactivity.
There have been tools and plugins for publishing this kind of content online with a unique structure, but they have done almost nothing to support the business processes required in digital marketing. They did not support automated data linking between the existing website and the new processed content, the organic reach of new users, and the building and continuous updating of internal links. They did not provide tools to support automated SEO or content development. In addition, almost all of them required programming skills, software development and operational background.
