Wait, stop that PDF!

07.08.24

Let's start with a statistic. PDFs are generally 10 times larger than text on a web page.

That’s pretty significant.

PDFs are also typically not accessible and are terrible for viewing on mobile devices, so why would you use one at all?

In certain circumstances, PDFs are useful but a lot of the time, we can feature the same content on a webpage with far fewer ill effects.

You can improve your website's sustainability, accessibility, SEO and speed performance, all at the same time, by featuring content on web pages instead of PDFs.

Information that users do not need to download or print can very happily live on a web page instead.

The benefits of reducing PDFs on websites:

  • Improved accessibility
  • Better performance
  • Improved SEO
  • Easier to update
  • Reducing the carbon footprint of your website

Enhancing accessibility

PDFs are often not accessible by default and require significant optimisation to meet accessibility standards. They also do not scale well on mobile devices, making them less suitable for modern users. However, the information in a PDF can often be easily republished as a web page, which, if your website is designed and developed for accessibility, can be made accessible with minimal effort.

Better performance

If large PDF downloads are slowing down your site, people who have slower internet speeds will find this particularly frustrating.

Improved SEO

If PDFs contain important information that search engines can’t crawl, then your website’s SEO could be negatively impacted. PDFs can be optimised for keywords, which should be considered, but many times a web page will be easier to set up.

PDFS can be large, especially if they contain large or complex images, which can slow down the load speed of a web page a lot. When web pages are faster to load, search engines are less likely to penalise you, so you may see an improvement in your ranking.

Quicker and easier to update

A webpage is far easier to update than a PDF, as you only need access to the CMS. There are more steps involved in updating a PDF and re-uploading it to the CMS. Users downloading the PDF might keep an old version of the content, instead of always having up-to-date information from a webpage.

Reducing the carbon footprint of your website

When less data is being stored on servers and less data being downloaded by each of your users, websites will score better for sustainability.

PDFs are cumbersome, and so viewing these, especially on mobile, can be tricky, demanding patience zooming in and out. All this time takes energy, which could be avoided.

Where to start

At Path, we can help you create a more inclusive website and transform PDFs into fully accessible, user-friendly content for all your audiences.

Get in touch at hello@path.ie or call 01 6799212.