Long PDF documents amplify
the lack of user friendliness as
readers must scroll through
many pages to read the
entire document. Ultimately,
readership is lost when mobile
users receive long PDFs with
more than one or two pages.
PDFs are typically larger
in file size than HTML and
consequently take longer to
download. Given the speed of
desktop and mobile browsing,
the loading times of PDFs can
be longer than users expect;
this consequently increases
the likelihood that users will
abandon the page.
According to a visual by
Kissmetrics, 1 second of
page delay can result in a 7%
reduction in conversions. These
implications are massive for
marketers and illustrate how
PDFs can negatively impact
goals. For a site with millions,
or even thousands of visitors,
this is a serious problem that
should be keeping marketers
up a night.
6 Whitepaper: The Limitations of PDFs for Marketers
Mobile data traffic
per month
(in exabytes)
2012
1.3
2014
4.2
2016
10.8
Source:
Cisco, 2012
