PDFs on a Small Business Site

Why documents end up on a site

Somebody has a price list, a brochure, or a specification in a word processor, exports it, and uploads it.

That is faster than building a page and it feels like publishing the information.

The result is a file that is harder to read on a phone, frequently unreadable to a screen reader, invisible to search in any useful way, and impossible to update without repeating the whole process.

For almost every small business, the honest answer is that it should have been a page.

What goes wrong with a document

• It does not reflow on a phone.
• Reading order is frequently wrong.
• Scanned pages are images of text.
• Headings and tables carry no structure.
• Text cannot be enlarged without scrolling sideways.

The first affects everybody. A document laid out for a printed page shown on a phone is a page-sized image that has to be pinched and dragged, which is why most people give up on them.

The scanned document is the worst case

And it is common.

A price list that was printed, signed, scanned, and uploaded is a picture of text.

Nothing can read it: not a screen reader, not search, and not anybody trying to copy a figure out of it.

It also cannot be enlarged usefully, since enlarging an image of text produces a larger blur.

If you publish anything that has been through a scanner, that is the first one to replace.

You can tell in two seconds by trying to select the text with your cursor.

A worked example

A business published its price list as a document, updated twice a year.

Customers regularly telephoned to ask what something cost, having been unable to read it on a phone.

They rebuilt it as an ordinary page with a simple list of services and prices, which took about an hour.

Telephone calls asking for prices dropped noticeably, the page became one of their most visited, and it started appearing in search for price questions the document never had.

Updating it is now editing a line rather than exporting a new file.

The accessibility improvement came free with a change made for entirely practical reasons.

The page is better for other reasons

Which is what makes this an easy argument.

Search can read a page properly and rank it for the questions it answers.

The page can be updated in a minute rather than a process.

It works on a phone without pinching, and the text can be enlarged by anybody who needs it.

And you can link directly to a section of it rather than to a file somebody has to search through.

Accessibility is one of five reasons here, and rarely the one that persuades anybody to act.

When a document is genuinely right

Since there are real cases.

Something intended to be printed, filled in by hand, and returned.

A formal document where the layout and signatures matter.

A specification supplied by a manufacturer that you are passing on unchanged.

In those cases, publish the document and put the key information on the page as well, so nobody has to open it to find out what it says.

The page becomes the readable version and the document remains available for whoever actually needs the printable one.

If you must publish one, do it properly

Which is a short list.

Export from the original word processor rather than scanning, so the text remains text.

Use real headings in the source document, which carry through to the export.

Give the file a sensible name rather than a code, since that name is what people see when it downloads to their phone.

Set the document title in its properties, which is what a screen reader announces.

And say in the link what it is and roughly how large.

Start with the one people actually open

Rather than all of them.

Most small business sites have between one and four documents and only one gets opened regularly.

That is usually the price list or the service list, and it is the one worth converting to a page this month.

The old brochure from 2019 that nobody has downloaded in two years can simply be removed, which is faster than fixing it.

Check what is actually being downloaded before deciding, since the answer is occasionally surprising.

A document uploaded three years ago for one customer is frequently still sitting there being found by nobody.

Public sector work makes this a requirement

Worth knowing if you sell to anybody in that sector, since it changes the calculation entirely.

Public bodies increasingly have accessibility obligations of their own, which means documents they receive and publish have to meet a standard.

A proposal, a report, or a specification submitted as a scanned or badly exported document creates a problem for them and is occasionally rejected for it.

That is a commercial reason to get your own document production right rather than only a compliance one, and it applies to what you send as much as what you publish.

Anybody bidding for that kind of work should ask what the requirement is before submitting rather than after.

The counter-case

Documents are not always avoidable.

Some industries expect specifications, certificates, and datasheets in that format, and customers ask for them by name.

A well-made document exported properly from a word processor is also considerably better than the worst case described here.

And rebuilding a forty-page catalogue as web pages is a genuine project rather than an afternoon.

In that case, put a summary page in front of it with the twenty things people actually look for.

Convert the one document people actually open into a page, remove the ones nobody downloads, and export the rest properly.

What to do

1. List the documents you publish.
2. Check which are downloaded.
3. Try selecting the text in each.
4. Convert the most-used to a page.
5. Remove the ones nobody opens.
6. Export the rest rather than scanning.
7. Say what it is in the link.

Step three is the fastest diagnosis available, since a document whose text cannot be selected is an image and is unreadable to everything except a pair of eyes.

Who these requirements apply to is covered in who the accessibility rules apply to.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.