Electronic documents have become vital business tools for companies across all industry sectors. Businesses invest significant amounts of time and money in the creation and distribution of this electronic content but the results of their efforts are usually unclear.
What is clear is that many businesses are not doing enough to ensure the effectiveness of their content. Companies hoping to take advantage of opportunities created by electronic document technology must first start taking the issue of document performance seriously.
What is the impact of document performance?
The term "document performance" refers to how well an electronic document is achieving its specific goals. Every document is created with a particular set of goals in mind, so the performance of any given document can only be judged according to its own unique set of criteria.
Let's look at a real-world example of the specific criteria that might be used to judge the performance of a typical document:
A computer software company, as part of its marketing activities, makes a data sheet available on its website. The company's objective is to inform prospective customers about its new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
- High-Performance Results.
The data sheet is downloaded by a large number of website visitors, including a significant number of decision makers from companies looking for a CRM solution. Most of these visitors read the entire data sheet, many open the document more than once and a number pass it along to their colleagues
- Low-Performance Results.
The data sheet is downloaded by only a few website visitors, some of whom do not actually open the document. The majority of those that do open the document only read the first page of the data sheet before closing and deleting it, without passing it along to any colleagues.
This example helps us to see the ways in which document performance can positively or negatively impact a company's bottom line. The high-performance results would be far more likely to increase sales of the CRM system. The low-performance results would represent a significant waste of the company's time and resources.
How are electronic documents distributed today?
The vast majority of electronic documents are distributed as PDF files – the ubiquitous standard in electronic document technology. By facilitating the broad, cost-effective distribution of high-quality documents, PDF has created remarkable opportunities for companies hoping to engage their customers and prospects with content.
Many companies are actually abandoning hard copy altogether and switching all of their content to PDF. Consequently, literally millions of electronic documents are now circulating online and companies are investing increasing amounts of resources in creating digital content.
The standard PDF technology has no features which allow content providers to measure the performance of their documents. Consequently, most companies that distribute content have no way of knowing if their documents are engaging readers or simply getting lost in the crowd.
Is measuring document performance important?
Right now, the importance of measuring document performance is poorly understood. However, as companies dedicate greater resources to creating electronic documents and put increasing pressure on management to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) of all activities, it seems likely that this state of affairs will have to change.
Companies that distribute content without measuring document performance are not able to account for the ROI of these activities. Furthermore, companies that do not gather detailed data on how their documents perform have no practical way of improving the ROI of their document distribution activities.
Docmetrics: Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Content
Vitrium Systems has designed the docmetrics system to fulfill the need for technology that will empower companies to measure and maximize the performance of their electronic documents. To learn more about the web-based docmetrics system and how it can benefit your business, simply click on the link below.
Learn More About Docmetrics
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