Interactive Flipbook Tutorial — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:00] Do you currently send your customers, employees,  or team PDF files and wish they were a little   snazzier and modern? Have you ever wondered if  anyone actually reads it? Well, in this video,   in partnership with Flipsnack, I'm going to walk  you through the only tool since 2011 that lets you  

[00:17] upload, design, brand, add interactivity,  collaborate, and track your Flipbook's   performance. This gives you the tools you need to  know what your customers are actually interested   in, worried about, loving, and spending their time  looking at. If you ever wanted to modernize your  

[00:32] business or communications, I'm going to show you  how with Flipsnack, the most complete flip book   maker on the market. Let's get started. To get  started, I'm going to head to flipsnack.com. Now,  

[00:44] right away on the homepage, you can upload your  PDF to get started, and you'll be prompted to   create a free account if you don't already have  one. There are different plans you can look at   based on your needs. And they do have those plans  for individuals and for teams and enterprises.  

[00:59] I'm going to go ahead and go back to the homepage  because if I scroll down, I want to show you that   if you need some inspiration, this is actually a  great way to see some real world use cases. And   you can flip through all of these examples all the  way from smaller businesses to name brands like  

[01:14] Esteé Lauder and Electrolux. You can flip through  and see examples of this in use. for example,   as a catalog or a magazine or a brochure in a  booklet. Because using a digital flip book is  

[01:26] going to give you more credibility because you're  keeping up with the technology and your customers   will appreciate you making it easier on them to  do business with you. I'm going to go ahead and   create a flip book. That's what we're going to  do together today. I already have an account,  

[01:39] so I'm going to go ahead and click sign in on the  top right hand side of the screen. Now, this is   going to take you to the same place it will once  you sign up for an account. And you'll see even   for larger organizations, you can use single sign  on for your employees because flip books also make  

[01:53] fantastic training modules. I'm going to go ahead  and click sign in with Google because that's where   my account is. And if we're keeping with the puns,  I'll catch you on the flip side. Once you sign in,   you're brought to the main landing page for your  account. And you'll see any and all flip books  

[02:07] that you've already created here along with their  status. For example, this one is not published and   this one is. We're going to go ahead and create  one. So on the top right hand side of the screen,   I'll click create. Now I absolutely can create  one from scratch, but I already have a PDF file  

[02:22] that I want to convert to a digital flip  book. So I'm going to go ahead and select   upload files and then browse from my device  to find it. I'll select my PDF and click open.

[02:34] Here is where we can start customizing this flip  book. At the top of the screen, I can toggle back   and forth between the experience my customers  will get, whether they're looking at this on a   desktop or a mobile device. At the bottom of the  screen, I can navigate quickly through the pages,  

[02:48] or I can also use these arrows on the side. On  the left hand side, we might want to update the   branding of the flip book. I can add my logo,  which will place it in the top lefthand corner   of the screen. I can change the accent color. This  is the color of the bar across the bottom of the  

[03:03] screen. I might want to change that to match my  branding. I can also change the background behind   my flip book. And if I don't want to see it at  all, I can choose transparent. I'll choose a   color. That looks good. And I can also save this  option for any future flip books that I create.  

[03:18] But now, let's head to the appearance tab on the  left hand side where there's a lot of decisions we   can make about how this looks to our customers.  I can decide things like page transition. Do I   want it to flip? Do I want it to slide? Or do  I want it to scroll? I can add page shadows,  

[03:36] which makes it look like an actual book. See what  it does in the middle of the screen. I can choose   the menu controls, such as allowing the viewer to  download this as a PDF or print it. These options   can depend on how accessible you want this flip  book. Maybe it's training materials that weren't  

[03:51] free versus a sales brochure in which you want  it to be available to as many people as possible.   Moving to the edit tab, you can completely  replace a PDF file and republish a flip book.  

[04:03] If I add products to my catalog after it's been  shared to my customers, they will always get the   most current version. So, I like that I won't have  to have copy after copy of this floating around,   not knowing who has the most current one. There  will always be the right one that everybody has.  

[04:18] Now, before we go and add some interactions to our  flip book, I want to click add-ons right here down   on the bottom left hand side. Now, later in this  video, we'll track how customers are viewing our   flip book, but I can add my own Google Analytics  here also. And I'm going to click accessibility.  

[04:35] I'm also going to toggle on use accessibility  here to show you that you can use AI to generate   descriptions for screen readers or you may already  have your own accessible version and you can   upload that here as well. There's full support  for it. The business version of Flipsnack allows  

[04:50] you to insert a lead form. My flip book might be  a training guide or a brochure, but only the first   few pages I'm going to give you for free. After  that, the customer can enter their email address   to get the rest of it. And I can choose what page  that occurs on. I'm going to toggle on use lead  

[05:05] form. So, if you're running a leadgen campaign,  instead of the entire ebook hidden under that lead   form, you can choose to make this free to flip  through up to a certain point. I can even add the   title if I want. I can edit the submit button text  and I can choose what page I want this to occur  

[05:21] on. I'm going to make it on page 5. And if you  are in a country that requires certain compliance   laws, you can toggle on the required message.  Let's hit the back button. I'm going to go   back to the edit tab. And now I'm ready to click  edit flip book to go into the design studio. I'm  

[05:37] now in design studio. And here's where I can add  interactive elements to my flip book. At any time,   I could add a new page, duplicate an existing  page, or delete one. I can scroll through and see  

[05:49] all the pages in my current flip book. I can also  zoom in and zoom out using these buttons down here   at the bottom. On the left hand side, I'm going to  click interactions. I want to add elements to what   I already have on this flip book. I'm going to  select a page that I want to add an element to. On  

[06:04] page two, I want to put a link over this text so  that viewers can click on it and visit my website.   If you scroll through the interactions list, I'm  going to see all the things that I can add to this   flip book. Things like slideshows, shop carts,  embedded objects, engagement things like quizzes  

[06:22] and questions, navigation buttons, social media  links, even carts and checkout items. Let's add   a link button. The link button appears and now  I can stretch it and drag it over where I want   that link button to be. I'll put in my URL. It can  be anything I want. It can even be a special link  

[06:38] to take viewers somewhere on my website. I can  change the tool tip so that when they hover their   mouse over it, it says what I want it to say. In  this case, I'll tell them where it's going to go.   Visit our website to learn more. I can choose  whether it opens in a new tab or the same tab.  

[06:53] And all the way on the top right hand side, I'm  going to click opacity and I'm going to set this   to zero. From here, I'll click preview. And let's  take a look at our link. There it is. Visit our   website to learn more. I've made this interactive.  I'll click the X and this time let's add a video.  

[07:10] I'll find a page that I want to put my video  on. This is a great size. I'm going to put a   video over this photo to make it more interactive.  So, still in the interaction section, I'll click   video embed. Here it is. Now, if I did click the  wrong thing, I can always click on any element,  

[07:26] rightclick, and choose delete. But in this case,  I'm going to resize it so it fits the area that   I want my video to go. That looks good. can tweak  it a little more. And on the left hand side, I can  

[07:38] either enter a YouTube or Vimeo or my own URL,  or I can click to upload a video. In this case,   I've already copied one from YouTube, so I'll  right-click and choose paste. I can decide what I   want that video to do. I do want it to autoplay,  and I am going to loop it. If I don't want the  

[07:55] audio to play, I can keep mute selected, which is  the default. I can also choose where I want the   we can see what that looks like again by clicking  preview. Here's my video. That looks great. Click  

[08:09] the X. And by the way, if you want interactive  elements, but you don't have your own video,   you can always click on elements and browse some  stock videos to insert. But let's add one more   interactive element. I really want a photo  slideshow. So, I'll go back to interactions  

[08:25] and I'll browse to a good page to put a photo  slideshow on. This one looks good. that you can   see how these different elements are suited for  different types of flip books that you can have.   For a product catalog, you would want these shop  areas in the shopping cart. For a training guide,  

[08:40] that's where you would probably want a quiz or a  question. Now, as this is a brochure, I want to   focus on making it really eye-catching, thus all  the photos and videos. And the nice thing about   a slideshow is that I won't need to add pages, so  it saves room. I'll click on slideshow, and just  

[08:56] like the video, I get a placeholder. I can click  and drag it exactly where I want it on my flip   book. Now I can upload some images. I'll click on  upload media. I'll add my files. I'll place check  

[09:08] marks next to all three of them. And I'll insert  three items. And again, we'll preview it and see   how it looks. That looks great. This isn't a  flat PDF anymore. We've made it eye-catching   and engaging. And later, we can see if people are  spending time on this page to know if we need to  

[09:24] make any changes. We're ready to share this out  to our customers. I'll click share. Now, I need   to decide if this is public, private, or unlisted.  Now, this really depends on what type of flip book   it is. For example, is it marketing material or is  it more private and confidential that is meant to  

[09:40] stay internal. Now, if you click private, you  can set the visibility and you can even share   this using a company SSO based login. I'm going to  leave this one as unlisted so anyone who has the   link can view it. I feel like I have more control  over it this way, even knowing other people can  

[09:56] send my link around. If I click this down arrow, I  can also choose a go live date or even a date that   the link won't work anymore. Now, I don't have  those constraints, so I'll click publish. There's   a lot of ways I can get this into the hands of  my customers. The link is right here, and I can  

[10:11] always click to copy it, but on the right hand  side, I can share it by a QR code. I think a great   use of this is if you're using this as a digital  program for a theater or conference. You can print   out signs and let your attendees scan it if it's  hanging on the wall to see the program. I can also  

[10:27] embed it onto my website or send it via email.  All the way at the bottom, I can even include   trackable links if I want to trace who is sending  it where. And I can even add multiple unique URLs.   Maybe I want to share this with different  audiences or track certain campaigns. Now,  

[10:42] at the top, that pencil icon is still there. So  if I change my mind later and say, I wish I had   made that indexable to search engines, I can  click this and edit the visibility and change   it. Now that it's done, I'll click flip snack  on the top left hand side of the screen to get  

[10:56] back to this main dashboard. If I hover my mouse  over my flip book, I get some options. The first   thing I'm going to do is click analytics. This  is my analytics dashboard. Over here on the left,   I can navigate through these options. For example,  I can see where all of my viewers are coming from.  

[11:13] We put a lead capture form on this. I can click  responses and see how many leads and all of them   that I've captured. From here, I'm going to go  back up to overview. If I scroll down, I can   see all sorts of data, including how long they've  spent on each page. This is useful to me because  

[11:29] if I look and see that they aren't visiting a  page or aren't spending a lot of time on a page,   that tells me that I either need to update it or  get rid of it because it could cost me viewers   if they close out of it on that page. I can even  see if they're clicking on my links on the page.  

[11:43] For example, I know on page two we put a link and  I can see here that they aren't indeed clicking   on it. If no one's clicking it, I can go in and  edit this to do a better job of making it visible.   Maybe they just aren't seeing it. So, that's  why knowing all of this information can help  

[11:59] me make a better flip book. I'll click the flip  snack icon again to go back to the main view of   all my flip books. At any time, I can click to  re-edit, customize this. I can go back into the   analytics. I can share it. And if I click on the  three dots, I can do things like rename it. And I  

[12:15] can also replace it with a brand new version. And  remember, the link stays the same. So everybody   will see the new version. I can move it to a  workspace. Maybe I want to bring in my team   to collaborate on this. Maybe I want the whole  marketing department in here or even legal to take  

[12:29] a look at it first. And finally, I can move this  to the trash and repeat the process and create a   new one at any time by clicking create again here  at the top right hand side of the screen. I think   this came out great. Flipsnack has been around  since 2011 and I'm finally in the modern era with  

[12:46] a real flip book that lives entirely as part of  my brand and all that from one flat existing PDF   file that started it all. In fact, down here  on the bottom left hand side of the screen,   I can take this further. If I click brand, I can  go into settings and I can even move this to my  

[13:02] own custom domain. I'm confident that my customers  will respond well to this and as it reflects that   my business also looks polished and updated,  this is going to lead to real conversions. If   you want to modernize your PDFs, try it for free  on flipsnack.com. The link is in the description.