PDFs on a mobile website: why menus and brochures fail

Key takeaways

A PDF on a mobile website asks a phone to display a page designed for A4 paper. The visitor pinches, zooms and drags to read it, loses the site's menu and buttons, and often gives up. Menus, price lists, brochures and forms published only as PDFs are among the most common reasons mobile visitors cannot find what they came for.

• A PDF keeps its paper layout, so text shrinks to fit a phone screen.
• Opening a PDF takes visitors away from your navigation and call buttons.
• PDFs are harder to make accessible, to track and to keep up to date.
• Publish the content as a web page and offer the PDF as a download.

Why do PDFs fail on phones?

PDFs fail on phones because the format fixes the layout to a page size. A web page reflows its text to the width of the screen. A PDF does not. An A4 page shown on a phone is scaled to roughly a third of its width, turning 11-point print into text a few pixels high.

Nielsen Norman Group has called PDF unfit for online reading for over twenty years. Its 2020 review lists the problems: slow to load, jarring to open, hard to navigate and laid out for paper. On mobile it describes reading a PDF as nearly impossible without pinching and scrolling around out of context.

• Why mobile-friendly web design is essential for UK businesses

What does a PDF cost you beyond readability?

A PDF costs you the rest of the page. When it opens, your header, menu, call button and enquiry form disappear, and the visitor is left in a document viewer with a back button. They read, or try to, and leave. There is no next step.

The Government Digital Service made the same case when it moved GOV.UK content from PDF to HTML: PDFs do not change size to fit the browser, are harder to find and maintain, cause difficulties for accessibility, and make it harder to track how people use the content.

• No navigation or calls to action inside the document.
• Limited analytics: you see a click to the file, not what was read.
• Accessibility problems unless the file is carefully tagged.
• Old versions linger in search results and downloads after you update.
• Large files that are slow and costly on mobile data.

• Mobile accessibility: the WCAG checks for small screens

Which PDFs do the most damage?

The ones that carry the information people most want. On small business sites that means menus, price lists, service brochures, opening times, timetables and application forms. Each is the answer to a question a mobile visitor arrived with, locked in the least mobile-friendly format available.

• Restaurant menus: the most viewed page, often a scan of the printed menu.
• Price lists and rate cards: the detail buyers look for first.
• Service brochures: the full description of what you do, invisible to the site.
• Timetables and class schedules: checked on the move.
• Forms to print, sign and return: unusable for someone with only a phone.

• Restaurant mobile websites: menu, booking and directions
• Tables and price lists on mobile: make them readable

What should you publish instead?

Publish the content as an ordinary web page and offer the PDF as an optional download. The page is readable on any screen, keeps your navigation and buttons, can be indexed section by section and is updated in one place. The PDF remains for people who want to print or save it.

• Menu: a web page with sections, prices and allergen information in text.
• Price list: stacked cards or a simple table, with an enquiry button beneath.
• Brochure: service pages, each with its own heading and call to action.
• Timetable: a responsive table or list, filterable by day.
• Printable form: an online form that can be completed and submitted on a phone.

• Mobile form design: forms people finish on a phone
• How to write a service page that wins enquiries

Are PDFs bad for SEO?

Google can index PDFs, so they are not invisible. They are a weaker asset than a web page. A PDF usually has no descriptive title, no internal links back to your site, no structured data and no way to convert the visitor who lands on it from search. Content in a web page does all of those.

There is a food-specific point too. Food businesses must make allergen information available to customers, and a web menu with allergens in text is easier to keep accurate and to read than a scanned sheet. If a dish changes, you edit one line.

• On-page SEO checklist for business websites

When is a PDF the right format?

A PDF is right when the document is meant to be printed, signed, filed or kept exactly as laid out: a contract, a certificate, a technical drawing, a detailed specification sheet or a report someone will read offline. In those cases the fixed layout is the point.

Even then, give it a gateway. Link to it from a web page that summarises what it contains, states the file size and offers the key facts in text. The visitor can then decide whether to download, and those on a phone still get the essentials.

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see across hospitality and trades: the 'Menu' or 'Prices' link in the navigation opens a PDF. It was the quickest way to get the printed version online. On a phone it downloads slowly, opens in a viewer and shows a page of tiny text. The most visited link on the site leads to its worst experience.

Rebuilding that one document as a web page is often the single most valuable mobile fix on the site. Global Bridge Labs (GBL) looks for PDF links in the main navigation at the start of every review, because they mark exactly where visitors' questions go unanswered.

• See client work
• Website Design & Development for UK businesses
• Make your website work properly on mobile

Next step

Tap every link in your main menu on a phone. Any that opens a PDF is a page you have not built yet. Start with the one visitors use most.