Consumer product companies invested into PDFs because they only had to produce one thing for print and electronic distribution, but because this digital format is tethered to the rules of physical printing it has become less relevant:
- PDFs are difficult to view and manage on a phone.
- Multiple different sub-formats and production engines mean that PDFs, even if delivered digitally, can be difficult and expensive to update.
- As companies expand their markets, it becomes costly and logistically difficult to add more translations in the PDF format, and so quality and clarity suffer to enable more to be put into the PDF.
- PDFs in the product packaging cannot be updated automatically and so mistakes can live for a very long time.
- PDFs can be used with QR codes and downloaded, but…..see above, point 1.
A vivid example of this comes from a member of the StepAlong team who had a sick child and he had to administer an antibiotic a 4:00 in the morning. Taking out the instructions for administering the medicine he encountered paper instructions that were folded 16 times to make it small enough to fit in the box, with very small text that lacked the necessary description, and the illustrations were so small and lacking in definition that they were practically useless.
At StepAlong, we are focussed on improving the customer experience by creating a mobile first experience, we often feel that we need to be the antithesis of the previous example, and defeat the PDF.
However, when talking with one of our clients recently we had an insight. The conversation was around that while most people are fine with using their phone, some still like to have a PDF they can print or use on their Tablet, and in some cases, such as complex products, it might be actually useful to have a PDF to compliment the StepAlong, that is give the client a choice, our client said to me:
‘If I could generate a PDF from a StepAlong, I wouldn’t need to keep producing PDFs, but I could still help my customers if they wanted one.’
And with this comment a number of things became clear to us:
- Our job is to shut up and listen to our clients 🙂
- We store instructions in a structured way within a database, one of the outputs of this is the StepAlong, but it could easily be something else – why not a PDF? Why not a video?
- If we take away the need for the PDF to be in multiple languages in as little space as possible in order to fit into the product packaging, we can create one that can actually be useful to end users.
- If you can create a great PDF with StepAlong, you can simplify your instructional workflow.
And so this is what we did. In July we deployed our PDF generation so that you can generate great looking and usable PDF from your StepAlongs:
- The PDF is automatically created for each instruction and language.
- You choose whether you have this as a private function (send to a client when they request) or you let you customers download at will.
- The PDFs look great, and prioritise utility over aesthetics:
- Appropriate font size for ease of readability.
- QR code to always have the online version as a reference.
- Images using the full layout, so users can see all the details.
The StepAlong PDF generator allows companies to commit to a digital and mobile first approach to their instructions, but not sacrifice the need for usable paper based instructions where necessary. The PDF does have a place in your instructional strategy, but it’s not at the bottom of the box, folded 16 times.
Recommended post: QR codes for product instructions in 2024.
