MoveData.io
Do you provide a calculator function on your business’s website to help prospective clients estimate the price, expenditure, or savings associated with your product or service? Many websites offer information tailored to each client’s requirements using calculators like this, saving them the headache of figuring it out on their own and increasing their engagement with your business at the same time.
By offering to send a high-quality, customized PDF displaying the results of an individual calculation, you will benefit by gathering information about your clients, while also supplying them with valuable data and promoting your business.
This is exactly how we equipped MoveData, a company that connects nonprofit organizations to Salesforce software. We created a calculator that generates the amount of time and labor MoveData can save an organization, based on inputs entered on the website, and sends a PDF attachment summarizing the outcomes.
In this article, we will take you through our process of developing the sleek and sendable PDF that MoveData uses to inform its potential clients about the many benefits of signing up!
Case Study: MoveData
The calculating tool we created for MoveData invites clients to supply the information necessary to generate an estimation of their potential ROI (including resources saved) if they purchase one of MoveData’s packages. After calculating, clients need to be able to save and review the final results. By entering their contact information, they can opt to receive a full breakdown of their calculations via email.
The easiest way to achieve this functionality is to use Contact Form 7, the most popular WordPress plugin for contact forms. This plugin makes it possible to email every client the exact results achieved with their particular information.
However, this method delivers an unattractive, plain-text email that hardly represents the values and aesthetics of a company like MoveData. Using HTML formatting lets us incorporate images and colors in the body of an email, but… what if we want to share the information contained in the email with others?
Yes, we could forward the message, but that looks careless and unprofessional – nobody wants that, right?
We all want our clients to be impressed with our correspondence, and to trust our business. A bespoke PDF attachment itemizing a client’s relevant data sends a clean, stylish message that communicates efficiency and professionalism.
Trying to Achieve the Perfect PDF
To create the versatile template that MoveData uses to communicate with its clients, we carefully explored our options. The “quick and easy” method, from a development perspective, is to use a JavaScript library called jsPDF. When a client fills in the calculation form on your website and hits “Send,” a jsPDF library can capture an image from this part of the page, convert it to a PDF, and send it on.
However, this approach comes with two significant disadvantages. First, that image is going to be pretty massive. Not only will the file be larger than some email servers can handle, but your site will be unavailable for user interaction for as long as it takes to create the image in the browser, insert it into the PDF file, and upload it to the server… and all of that can take a while. The second issue is that, when the content of your PDF is an image, you can’t select any text from it – and you might want to!
Another option is to connect to a 3rd-party HTML-to-PDF converter tool via API. We tried DocRaptor (https://docraptor.com/). Again, this is an easy solution from our perspective, but it has serious downsides.
First, you have to pay for a subscription. That cost depends on the number of documents you plan to convert. For example, if you think your users will request calculations up to 325 times per month, you’ll have to pay $29 every month. Honestly, we wouldn’t want to set ourselves up for a recurring cost if we could avoid it, and we wouldn’t blame you for feeling the same way!
Furthermore, converters like this require you to send data from your page to their platform, and then to wait while they process the results and send them back. This gums up the works on your site and compromises website performance. Not ideal.
So, What’s the Answer
?
Our research taught us that PDFs can be generated on the server instead of in the client’s browser. After your client enters his information and hits “Send” to request a PDF, the result of the calculation can be sent to the server. A new HTML page displaying the results is then produced, and this page converts into a PDF before sending. This approach results in much less data transfer, which means it works much faster. Beyond that convenience, the PDF is created from an HTML page instead of an image, which means you can copy and paste any relevant text that you might need to use. That’s exactly what we want: something we, you, and your clients can all be proud of.
There are several ready-made solutions to perform this task. We’ve tried all of them. Let us give you the benefit of our experience: mPDF is a reliable and stable PHP library that has the greatest variety of options, allowing the most accurate setup.
However, without significant adjustments, even mPDF does not give the best results in terms of design. It produces PDFs that would make your graphic designer weep. When we tried working with mPDF, the results lacked the gentle curved edges and crucial indents from the design we were given. Some modern CSS/HTML features simply aren’t supported in old-school PDF specifications.
Thanks to our collective experience, we recognized that PDF layouts are actually quite similar to email template layouts. Thus, using a well-known and supported approach for producing email templates, we created an HTML page and painstakingly figured out how to circumvent the peculiarities and restrictions of our PDF. It took time, but the final results speak for themselves.
Thanks to expertise, dedication, and research, we were able to deliver exactly what MoveData required: a polished, customized PDF attachment that sends instantly and gives a great impression of their business.
Are you looking for a way to send vital information to your customers in a format that shows your business in the best possible light? Let our team of developers implement the technology to make it a reality!
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James Gilray
Customer Success Director at MoveData
MarkUpUs is a true partner in every sense of the word. They produce a high standard of work, are responsive to requests and resourcing, and use all the right project management tools and methodologies to produce the desired outcome. I believe they are very affordable for the quality of service received, and they take a healthy and proactive attitude to any challenges which might be more complicated, originally unforeseen, or which need to be revised as development is underway. As such I have recommended MarkUpUs to numerous other organizations all of whom have expressed gratitude for the introduction and quality of work they now enjoy.