PDFs and downloadable documents can be an important part of a business website. They can also be used by a wide variety of business sectors and niches due to their flexibility.
Examples of these include terms and conditions, pricing lists, menus, guides, booking/sign up forms and more. In most cases, these are uploaded and a simple link or button is including to take the user to the PDF in a new window or tab - this is usually because the information in the PDF isn't something that needs to be front and centre of your website. However, in some cases, you may need to actually display your PDF to your website visitors without them having to click on an easily missable link or button.
This is where embeddable PDFs come into play - if you are a restaurant or café, a PDF may be the best way for you to display your menu, but you want your potential customers to find it easily. A tool we at Cosmic like to use to solve this conundrum is Issuu. Issuu allows for the upload of PDFs - single or multiple pages - which can then be embedded into your website with a HTML snippet.
This will then display the PDF on your website either as a single page or as a booklet which you can read, turning pages as you would on a physical version.
Issuu is free to use if your publications are under 100MB, but if you'd like larger file uploads and more features you may need to look at upgrading to Issuu's Premium and Optimum packages which are priced at $35/mo and $269/mo.
Let us know how you currently manage your PDFs and downloadable files by tweeting to @Cosmic_UK!