Why PDFs are (usually) bad

If you’re publishing useful online content in PDFs, you’re probably frustrating many of the people you’re trying to help.

PDFs tend to be hard to use. In some situations, they’re impossible to use.

Here’s why.

PDFs are usually designed for print

Many PDFs are documents that were originally designed to be printed and read offline. The publishers have simply uploaded the PDF to their website without making any changes.

But these PDFs often don’t support the way people read online (scanning rather than reading every word).

Uploading your PDFs may be convenient for you, but it doesn’t consider the needs of the reader.

They don’t behave in a predictable way

You can’t create a consistent user experience with PDFs.

Different devices use different software to open them. And that affects how the user experiences your content.

Sometimes your device will let you read a PDF online. Sometimes it makes you download the PDF before letting you read it. This can be enormously frustrating for users.

Web pages don’t display completely consistently either. But web browsing is much more standardised than PDF viewing.

Many PDFs appear way too small on a phone screen

PDFs are not responsive to different screen sizes like most websites are.

It’s common for them to display very small text so that users have to pinch and zoom in order to read the content. And that in turn makes it harder for them to move around the page and find what they’re looking for.

These days, most websites are responsive, meaning that they appear differently on different screen sizes. By contrast, PDFs tend to have a fixed design that doesn’t change to accommodate the user’s device.

Accessibility is a big challenge for PDFs

On the web, accessibility is about making sure everyone can access your content, all the time.

That includes making sure people who use assistive technology such as screen reading software can use your website.

It’s harder to make an accessible PDF than it is to make an accessible web page. PDFs often don’t work well with screen reading software.

This means, among other things, if you’re publishing important information in PDF format then you’re likely to be excluding people with certain disabilities.

It can be hard to find what you’re looking for in a PDF

In user tests I’ve been involved in, users tend to just give up when a PDF appears. They know the information is there, but it’s too much work to find it.

This behaviour is an exaggerated form of what we see on standard web pages. Users often seem to lose their patience when they’re on the web, and PDF makes this a whole lot worse.

So why do people publish in PDF?

Despite all these issues with PDF, many people still publish their most useful content in PDFs. Why? I can think of three main reasons.

1. Sometimes they already have something that was designed for print, and they want to make it available online.
2. People sometimes think that their designed PDF is more attractive than a web page. They think it’s likely to engage or interest users more.
3. Sometimes it’s easier to publish a PDF. It might be more convenient to use Word or InDesign than a content management system.

These approaches are wrong because they either:

• misunderstand how people tend to use the web
• prioritise the needs of the content creator over the needs of the user.

What to do instead

If you want to help your readers, publish in a format that’s easy for them to access and use.

Normally, this means publishing standard web pages via your CMS.

If you’re publishing ebooks, use one of the many free tools that let you turn a Word document into a mobi or epub file. You could even go a step further and use something like BookFunnel to help your readers get it onto their device.

When I buy or sign up for an ebook and it turns out to be a PDF, I often think the content creator is trying to punish me. They’ve produced some valuable content, but I can’t read it on either of my preferred reading devices (my phone or my Kindle).

If you don’t want to punish your readers, avoid PDF as much as possible!