In our on-the-go world, smartphones have become an intrinsic part of our everyday routine. In fact, people spend around five hours a day on their smartphones, and over 55% of all web traffic is mobile.
And when we talk about accessing documents on multiple devices throughout the day, there are few technologies as popular as PDF. That’s why making PDF documents mobile-friendly and easy to read on mobile devices is crucial for any business success. So today, let’s talk about what makes a PDF mobile-friendly, tips for optimizing PDFs for mobile devices, and how you can enhance your PDF content by turning it into interactive PDF flipbooks specially tailored for smartphones and tablets.
What is a Mobile-Friendly PDF?
A mobile-friendly PDF is a document that displays clearly on smartphone and tablet screens and is easy to navigate. Such a PDF has a responsive design and an optimized file and image size to reduce storage space and ensure functionality. For good readability, a mobile-friendly PDF typically has only one or two columns of text, a larger font size, and smaller margins.
Tips for Creating a Mobile-Friendly PDF
#1 Optimize Your PDF for Mobile Viewing
First and foremost, you can optimize your PDF for viewing on smartphones and tablets. The quickest way to do this is by using Adobe Acrobat. Just follow these steps:
- Open your document in Adobe Acrobat.
- Go to File > Save as Other > Optimized PDF. It will open the PDF Optimizer dialog box.
- In the Settings dropdown menu, choose Mobile. It already contains settings that are optimized for displaying PDFs on mobile devices.
- Click OK.
When you select the Mobile option, you see other available categories:
- Images
- Fonts
- Transparency
- Discard Objects
- Discard User Data
- Clean Up
You can edit each category to make the document compatible with older versions of Acrobat, along with other compression options.
Don’t forget to test and fine-tune your PDF with these settings to get desired results. Remember that iOS and Android devices have varying features, and they might not handle the PDF in the same manner.
#2 Reduce Your PDF File Size
Another important step to enhancing your PDF mobile viewing is to reduce your PDF file size. Again, Adobe Acrobat can help with this task. Here are the steps to do that:
- Open your document in Adobe Acrobat.
- Go to the All Tools tab.
- Select Compress a PDF.
- Single file to access the PDF file you want to compress.
- Select a folder to save your optimized PDF to.
- Click OK.
You can read about other ways and tools for compressing your PDFs in our article.
#3 Design and Format Your PDF with Mobile in Mind
If you create a PDF for mobile devices, use the following design tips to optimize your PDF for mobile viewing online right from the start:
- Use a single column to display text where possible.
- Make text readable: ensure that text is large enough to be read on a mobile device without zooming. Use clear, easy-to-read fonts and adjust line spacing for better legibility.
- Apply .25-inch margins all around to make it easier to read more text on your phone without scrolling as often.
- Use bold text and a 40-pixel font for headlines.
- Use a 35-pixel font for paragraph text.
- Keep document files small in size for quicker load times. You can reduce the file size of images by changing their resolution or mode.
- Make links and buttons touch-friendly and big enough to be easily tapped with a finger. This will make navigation on mobile devices easier.
If you want to empower your PDF even further, we recommend converting it into a digital flipbook. Flipbook is a digital file format that allows you to present your content online across any screen and device. Here’s how your interactive flipbook can look:
There are numerous flipbook makers out there, but our article will focus on FlippingBook. Let’s explore how the flipbook format can help you best present your content on mobile devices.
Benefits of Creating Mobile-Friendly Flipbooks
Reimagined reading experience
By transforming your PDF into a flipbook, FlippingBook gives it an enhanced mobile document viewer. Thanks to the sleek design, two-page view in the landscape mode, and realistic page flip effect, your documents look authentic and engaging, catching your readers' attention at first glance.
Our HTML5 flipbooks have vector text, ensuring crisp text quality on any mobile device, including those with smaller screens. What’s more, the text always looks crisp and clear, and you can read it even without zooming in. And if you do zoom in to study all the details, the text will remain of the same high quality. By the way, to zoom in, you can just double-tap on the screen. Our algorithm determines the ideal zoom scale to fit the content that you most likely are interested in.
As far as navigation is concerned, if you need to find certain info while reading a flipbook on a mobile device, you can use thumbnails, clickable table of contents, and text search. It's far more user-friendly than searching within a PDF.
Interactivity
All the interactive elements you add to your FlippingBook documents, such as videos, GIFs, pop-up image galleries, and links, are available on mobile devices as well. As a result, your content remains as rich and versatile on mobile devices as on desktops, maximizing mobile traffic and potentially attracting new leads and clients.
Easy sharing
Since your PDF flipbook becomes available online, there’s no need to worry about the file size and heavy email attachments. You simply send your readers a direct link to your document and they will be able to open and read it instantly on any device. No need to download anything. Thus, your interactions with clients become more efficient and fast.
💡 According to FlippingBook's research, the flipbooks made with the tool load twice as fast as the market average—the initial loading time is an average of just 1.5 seconds! Faster content means that wherever people view your flipbooks—on the go, during a Zoom call, or in areas with poor signal—they’ll have the best experience possible. Plus, such flipbooks consume up to 50% less mobile traffic. Watch the video to learn all the details.
Powerful analytics
In your FlippingBook Online Stats dashboard, you can learn what devices your readers view your content on—desktops, phones, or tablets. If you notice that your audience reads your content on tablets or smartphones, you can optimize your flipbooks for better mobile viewing and address your clients' preferences.
Streamlining Sales Tasks with FlippingBook App
We have our own FlippingBook App that makes communicating with clients easier and working with collateral much more efficient. You always have all the documents you need right at your fingertips in one place and can showcase the flipbooks in the app during your business meetings. Bringing the powers of a mobile-friendly PDF and FlippingBook App together will result in success for your marketing and sales efforts.
Wrap-up
Crafting a mobile-friendly PDF can elevate the presentation of your documents and offer an enriched reading experience to your audience. Moreover, it can solidify your industry reputation and foster business growth. So go ahead and start creating PDFs with mobile in mind! And if you want to convert your PDFs into flipbooks, don’t hesitate, give FlippingBook a try.
