It is amazing, but some vendors continue to serve press releases as PDF (portable document format) files -- not standard Web pages -- from their Web site. It is not that common anymore, but it is still surprising to stumble across companies adhering to this outdated practice. Don't get us wrong -- we love the PDF file format. But for online press releases, it makes no sense.
PDF has its place ...
Why use PDF at all? It's not like the PDF file format as a bad thing for companies or the tech industry. It has done much to ensure consistency among documents across platforms on a global basis. The top reasons to push the format today include:
- PDFs are great for preserving formatting, particularly for printing. The PDF format was developed almost fifteen years ago by Adobe Systems and is considered an open standard today -- and is on its way to becoming an international standard. It's two most useful features initially and now are: 1) Its ability to retain formatting (other file formats often provide different visible results in different applications or even the same application on different computer platforms); and 2) its extensive cross-platform support (a PDF can be read on many flavors of Microsoft Windows, on Apple Mac OS X-based computers, on Linux systems, and on a variety of other devices).
- PDFs are excellent for offline, PC-centric storage. Archived Web pages, such as press releases, never look that great, and usually the process isn't as smooth as vendors claim. What about just preserving links? It's easy to bookmark a page, but what if the content changes or is moved? A PDF "hard" digital copy of a file means that a user can store that file and access it on his or her PC.
- PDFs give producers more content control. PDFs by nature resist editing in many standard software applications. They can also be locked down and secured to limit reading, editing, and even the cutting/copying of text and graphics. A determined user can always find tools to hack almost any PDF security and access control schemes (simple screen shots are impossible to stop), but for the most part, PDFs are a much more reliable format for control than the raw HTML of Web pages or other application-specific file formats, such as those used by Microsoft Word.
... but not with press releases
Why do we think that PDFs make no sense for press releases served from Web sites? The top three reasons are:
- They hurt search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Marketing spends -- or should spend -- a lot of time optimizing site content, keywords, and other digital assets to help improve organic (user initiated, non-pay) search and paid search results. Press releases are a good source of content and are chock full of keywords, but the PDF format makes it harder to reconcile the content with search engines. At best, it is not the best in terms of SEO; at worst, it seriously hinders SEO efforts.
- The viewing experience is jarring to site visitors. While it certainly makes sense for some Web content to remain in PDF format, such as some documentation and white papers, press releases should not be PDF files. Users simply do not need the primary benefits of the document -- formating for display and printing and the ability to store the document. While it may seem that a little bit of sacrifice of usability is not the end of the world, recognize that as marketers, you spend hours upon hours trying to smooth over usability issues, so knowingly introducing a UI hiccup makes little sense. Also note that many technically-inclined sites have long taken to warning visitors not only of external links, but also of links to PDF files.
- They don't work well for many mobile devices. With the increased popularity of Web standard-compliant devices like Apple's iPhone, users expect their Web content to seamlessly integrate with their mobile, online experience. While many non-PC devices can read PDF files, that doesn't mean it is the best experience for users. Users would be better served by uniform text formatting based on HTML and cascading style sheets (CSS), where navigation is the same as any browser-accessed Web page (versus PDF, which usually has different navigation, search, and display options than a Web page).
We have never seen a press release that actually requires the tight formatting control of PDF files. Almost every release is a simple five to six paragraph text page -- easily handled by HTML and CSS. And if you desire fancy formatting, a good HTML/CSS designer can accomplish much with standards and core Web technology (see one of our favorite sites, CSS Zen Garden, for lots of examples how CSS can easily manipulate content display).
Perhaps you are one of the few that still publish releases in PDF. We'd love to hear about your reasons, as being in the minority doesn't make you wrong, it just makes you in the minority.
For those without valid reasons, we suggest you find a break in your marketing activities to plan for the end of your PDF press release habit.
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