Flipbooks are a long-established digital publishing tool. They replicate online the real-world experience of their printed counterparts, things like brochures, newspapers and books. Flipbooks can be used to showcase a publisher’s product – a magazine, for example – in digital form. They can also be used to enliven the online versions of printed editions by including rich media, animation and so on.
But flipbooks’ content, just like in printed versions, is fixed on to the page. And depending on the amount of content that is on that fixed page, readers may have to navigate their way around by zooming-in to read content and by panning left and right. The content experience can vary greatly across channels and devices. On mobile, in particular, this can prove tricky and requires a time investment from the reader. Not all content sits comfortably on static web pages and some digital documents can feel clunky and dated.
For showcasing printed publications on a digital stage, flipbooks are an excellent way to recreate the real-world experience. But when the objective is content absorption, it makes sense to consider the needs of a mobile-first audience and then work backwards, ensuring that the content created is optimized for every platform.
Over 5 years ago, Google announced that mobile-friendliness would be a ranking factor in its search algorithm. The more mobile-friendly the content is, the more highly it will score. And the greater the ranking, the more traffic the website will get.
Responsive content is designed to automatically scale to suit the screen size of the reader’s device. Elements like text, images and media do not extend beyond the screen’s width. And this allows readers to enjoy content without the distraction of having to pan left and right to read it. To read more, readers simply scroll down. To go to the next page, they just swipe. This hugely simplifies the reader experience, removing distractions and enhancing enjoyment.
Historically, creating responsive publications – with so many variables to factor into the content’s position – has been a technically complex process from both a design and a coding perspective. The creation of this type of content has typically been a collaborative process: with marketers creating the content, designers laying it out into an engaging format and then coders converting the lay-outs into web pages.
On interactive content experience platforms, like 3D Issue’s Experios, the in-depth knowledge of designers and developers has been absorbed into intuitive editors. These offer the user an abundance of pre-configured publications, pages and page components, making it easier to create top quality publications without relying on external design and coding resources.
The user can choose from a comprehensive selection of templates or create a publication from scratch. An intuitive drag and drop editor removes the complexity of adding responsive components, content, animations, media – and even forms – making page building simple.
So without any design or coding skills, marketers can get content into their audience’s hands – quickly, easily, and in a format that ensures the highest quality experience, resulting in a greater return on content creation investment.
Cutting-edge, responsive content creation tools have the power of the leading design platforms – like Photoshop and InDesign – but without their complexity. With a familiar interface experience, digital experience platforms give users the tools to create top-notch publications – like brochures, infographics and magazines – in minutes.
