Electric Rain, Inc.
View the Electric Rain Swift 3D v4 Datasheet
“The FlashPaper format is a better solution for viewing documents over the web for several reasons. Since the documents can be viewed using the Flash Player, and almost all browsers include the Player, there is no need to load a slow, heavy viewer like Adobe Reader. The documents open in an instant, right there in the browser.”
Dave Klein
Vice President of Marketing
Electric Rain, Inc.
Developed by
Products used
FlashPaper 2Try | Buy
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Electric Rain is the industry-leading developer and supplier of 3D-to-vector Flash solutions, including the award-winning Swift 3D software. Electric Rain’s tools combine with established authoring technologies such as Macromedia Flash to allow web professionals to create truly inspiring online experiences.
Challenge
Electric Rain needed an effective way to publish printable, easily accessible documents online. The documents to be published included product datasheets, product comparison charts, online press kits, support documents for marketing emails, white papers, case studies, and software “Read Me” files. Because Electric Rain relies almost exclusively on its online presence to drive sales, the company needed an efficient, professional solution that would impress visitors at the very first glance.
Solution
Macromedia FlashPaper 2
Benefits
• FlashPaper provides a superior user experience.
• FlashPaper allows for faster viewing of online documents.
• No additional viewer such as Acrobat Reader required to view a FlashPaper document.
Project Details
As Electric Rain prepared to launch the newest version of its flagship product, Swift 3D, Dave Klein, vice president of marketing at Electric Rain, recognized the need to optimize the impact of the company’s website.
“Our website is our primary sales tool,” says Klein. “We don’t have the resources that larger companies have, so our strategy is to drive people to the site and let the site do the selling.”
In anticipation of the launch, Klein and his colleagues conducted a comprehensive overhaul of the entire website, seeking to maximize its ability to drive revenue.
Klein realized that much of the online information about Electric Rain’s products was published using PDF format. The published documents included product datasheets, product comparison charts, online press kits, white papers, and case studies. Klein recognized that while Electric Rain’s webpages gave an inviting overview of their products, it was these detailed documents that would compel a decision to buy.
View an Electric Rain use of FlashPaper 2
“We were really concerned with efficiently delivering the information in the most seamless way,” says Klein. “Obviously, these online documents were a critical piece of that.”
Klein discovered Macromedia FlashPaper, and soon recognized it was a superior solution to PDF for most of the documents the company published.
“The FlashPaper format is a better solution for viewing documents over the web for several reasons. Since the documents can be viewed using the Flash Player, and almost all browsers include the Player, there is no need to load a slow, heavy viewer like Adobe Reader. The documents open in an instant, right there in the browser,” says Klein.
“Plus, in addition to saving loading time, the experience itself is better. FlashPaper documents just have a cleaner look and feel than PDF documents viewed in the Adobe viewer.”
Klein concedes that for larger documents, such as a 3MB user guide that customers will download and print, PDF is still the company’s preferred format. Since FlashPaper 2 software generates the PDF format as well, however, Klein can use it to create all of his online documents, both FlashPaper and PDF all for hundreds less than currently available solutions.
Another advantage of FlashPaper is its extreme ease of use. By allowing non-technical users to create online documents in one click, the software frees up the web professionals at Electric Rain for more technical work.
“I am kind of blown away by how easy it is to use,” says Klein. “We are going to have to update these documents every nine months or so, but with FlashPaper, that task will literally be just a click of a button over a matter of minutes. From that standpoint, it is awesome.”
Klein’s goal with FlashPaper was to improve the overall experience for visitors to the company’s website. His efforts were validated when, not long after the FlashPaper documents were published, customers in the company’s online support forum publicly complimented the new format.
Encouraged by his own experience and this feedback from customers, Klein has begun to use the FlashPaper format in new areas, including the “Read Me” files included with shipped software, as well as online documents that support marketing emails.
“In the end, FlashPaper allows us to offer a better end user experience,” says Klein. “And as a small company committed to presenting a professional image to the customer, the ability to do this makes a real difference.”
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