It’s time for my monthly review of the best web app I’ve uncovered online this month. As always, I’m super excited to share with you the product that tops the list this time around. After a whole lot of sifting in the last couple of weeks, I came across a brochure making an application that goes by the name Yumpu Publishing that fully blew my mind. I didn’t actually need to create a brochure at the time but I’d seen this brochure creator mentioned on a few “top 10” lists on blogs I visit a lot so thought I’d get experimenting with it to see if it’s worth sharing with you guys as my app of the month, and boy is it. I created a free account that took all over 30 seconds and was met with an unbelievably simple but well-thought-out interface. I was assured that all I needed to do was upload my PDF and the app would do the heavy lifting and turn my dull document into something fabulous. I wasn’t disappointed. The brochure creator is part of a steadily growing digital publishing platform that simulates the experience of reading a print publication (magazines, catalogs, flyers, brochures, etc.) online. The digital publishing platform has over 20 million publications which have all been created with their software and includes some big household name magazines as well as countless smaller publications. And as you can expect with that much content the platform also has millions of active readers checking their stuff out monthly. I soon realized that with such a wide-reaching platform the brochure-making software is the perfect tool to launch momentum for a new or existing business. Whether you need to create brochures for your business or for a personal project, the free version of Yumpu Publishing comes fully loaded with features and is by no means another restrictive free trial that hounds you for money before letting you do anything.
Seeing is believing!
When I tried it out for myself I went in with lowered expectations. I had tried a fair few brochure-making tools in the past when I needed to create a brochure last year and each one of them left me disappointed in one way or another. I was about to dash my hopes of finding an interactive brochure maker to add to my ‘best of’ list when I landed on the Yumpu Publishings site. I created an account in 30 seconds flat, uploaded my PDF and off I went.
One of the features that caught my eye right away was the application’s hot spot editor. The editor made it super easy to add videos, sounds, links and slideshows to publications. With simple dragging and dropping I managed to place my media just where I wanted it. After that I used the editor to adjust sizing and positioning and in no time my hotspots were perfect!
Third party sites not necessary to upload
This brochure creator made it possible for users to upload media directly to the website, or through third-party sites like Youtube and Vimeo for videos, Soundcloud for audio, and Flickr for slides. If the content was uploaded locally it could be linked easily to individual publications. I loved the fact that implementing audio was just as straightforward as getting videos and slides onto your interactive brochure template. There were lots of options when it came to the type of audio that could be added to brochures but among the most popular were interviews, comments, radio spots, and music.
I was excited to find that the application possessed automatic link detection capabilities that could be used to detect links like email addresses, phone numbers and previously uploaded hotspots.
The brochure creator scored even more points for its optimized content delivery feature that allowed for content to always be shown in the best way possible no matter what device was being used. I have lost count of the number of brochure makers I have tried in the past that haven’t caught up with the fact that we are now living in a mobile world with dozens of screen sizes and thus my previously created brochures have looked terrible on my iPhone due the fact that they are not responsive. No such issue with this platform. Further, optimized content delivery equated to substantially reduced loading times which was great!
I finished designing my super stylish digital brochure and just when I thought I had exhausted all the features I was introduced to the application’s version of optimized sharing on social media. After uploading your brochure to their website (which exposes you to a network of millions of active readers!) it’s easy to share your publication onto sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest. Once shared, users can even flip through the pages of their brochure live on sites like Facebook.
I was beyond thrilled with my newly designed professional and interactive brochures. Once the trial’s done there’s the option to choose from a range of paid plans to suit your budget. Yumpu Publishing’s paid options come with even more features and reasons to love brochure designing and at the end of my exhausting brochure hunt, I decided to go for it!
So that’s why this software is my app of the month. Here’s your chance to rediscover the good parts of getting things done yourself. Snag their free version here Yumpu Publishing.
