Make an interactive PDF

Heyzine Team -

The PDF is the most widely used file format in the world, and it has lots of advantages, but it lacks when it comes to making your readers not only read but also experience and interact with your digital publication.

An interactive publication is easier to remember and can make a difference in creating brand awareness and engagement.

Through this article, we will see an easy example of how to create an interactive PDF with many different interactions like embedded youtube videos, background music, and online forms directly embedded into your online publication.

Upload the PDF

The first step is to upload your PDF to heyzine to create the interactive PDF. After a few seconds or minutes depending on the size of the file, click the customize button to start adding interactions.

Now without doing anything else, we already have an eye-catching publication with page turn and many options to further customize it. Let's start by adding an image that will take the reader to the relevant section of the document.

Click the Image button on the left menu and select an area of the PDF:

Upload the picture with the browse button or select an existing one:

We can change it at any time by clicking the edit mode, selecting the image we want to change, and by clicking the Image button on the toolbar.

It's time to decide what to do when the reader clicks the picture; for this example, we will go to the 4th page, but we could also link to any external website. It's also possible to enable the toggle below to make it blink for a second, so the reader knows the picture is interactive.

Add a youtube video

It's usually a good idea to upload the videos to youtube, Vimeo, or similar services where we can take advantage of the reach of social networks, and we can use them directly embedded on the interactive PDF.

First, we have to choose the video option from the side menu, define the publication area where we will show it, and select the video provider.

Then we need to go to Youtube, find the video to embed, copy the link from the address bar of the browser, and paste it into the editor.

It's also possible to adapt the behavior of the player depending on the type of video. For example, we can make the video autoplay, and mute it if the video sound is not essential, or we already have background music.

Add background music

Some publications can benefit a lot from music to create a more immersive or catchy experience.  There are many royalty-free songs to download on sites like BenSound or Pixabay, for example, and we only have to upload the ones we are going to use on the Background Audio menu.

After uploading the audio to heyzine, we must select the pages where it will start and stop playing. With the options button, we can adjust the volume or make it loop when the playback ends.

Embed an online google form

One of the most potent interactions we can add is the web iframe. We can use it to embed maps, calendars, shop widgets, and almost everything from external online services, the limit is the imagination. A good example is to embed a form to get feedback from the readers.

There are plenty of form services, but we are going to use Google Forms. It's a free service, and it's straightforward to configure. We only have to choose the different questions and the type of answers we expect, and we will see the responses on the upper tab when the readers start sending them.

When ready, click Send, via embed HTML, and copy the embed code.

Then back to the heyzine editor, add a web interaction to an area of the page, and paste the code we got from google forms.

Demo

And here we have the final result, simple and easy yet a great interactive publication.

To share or publish it to different platforms, check the publishing guides, and to find other ways to customize the viewer or branding, check the editor guides.

To create the original PDF, there are a lot of tools you can use. We usually recommend Canva, it's easy to use, and the result is excellent. When you have it ready, look for heyzine in the publish apps to convert it directly.