Document embedding and web form building can be a necessity when sharing information, and it's hard to find a reliable service that offers premium business solutions. Mix and match these 7 tools to get the most out of a documents suite, and watch your information work for you.
For some, GoogleDocs can be a personal organization savior. Its embedding abilities easily allow documents to be dropped on nearly every web page, and the form submission features make for easy contact forms that can be perused within the Google Apps interface. It works fantastically for an individual’s own solutions, but what about a business?
Developing and maintaining a customized document suite can cost lots of time and money. Server space, thousands of lines of code, and an internet specialist are all absolutely necessary to even get a standardized document embedding system up and running.
Instead, there are many online services that cater to document suite services that can be tailored to business needs. These tools, optimized for businesses and catering to mass quantities, are the answer to a pumped-up small business documents suite. They offer embedding and form building with many extras that tailor the suite itself to all business needs.
Whether the goal is to share documents, embed printables onto a page, or provide an easily customizable web form for all user submissions, these options can be mixed and matched to make the right document management arsenal for your business. Best of all? None of them cost a dime to try out.
Sites to Share and Embed Documents
Inc. Tools & DocStoc
Unlike others on this list, DocStoc is 100 percent focused on document sharing and embedding for small businesses. You may know the service already as the power behind our Inc. Tools section, which has documents dealing with many aspects of small business life. Contracts for bulk sales, templates for business descriptions, and even budget calculators are available for download straight from the Inc. Tools page on the website. “Our goal is to make every small business better,” says DocStoc CEO Jason Nazar, “and we have both the widest breadth and highest quality of documents to make that happen.”
The selection of documents is even more broad on the service’s website, which invites small business owners to upload their own documents and share right away. Each upload, which can be from a variety of filetypes, is easily embeddable with a customized set of colors and logos onto a company website or shared through social media outlets like Twitter. While signing up to use and upload DocStoc is free, there is also a premium plan that starts at $9.95 per month. Content is also available for individual purchase in the company’s “DocStore,” which is ideal if a user is only interested in a particular document to suit their needs.
But accessing and sharing documents is only one piece of the DocStoc suite. Users also have the opportunity to monetize their documents on the website. DocStoc’s partnership with Google AdSense means that the document is able to make money every time a reader also clicks on an adjacent ad. “You can also upload documents specifically to sell DocStoc,” adds Nazar, “We build the whole e-commerce platform for you.”
Scribd
Already utilized by multiple industries, from publishing houses to branches of the UN, Scribd uploads more than 15 filetypes and translates them into organized, readable online publications. All public documents available on Scribd are organized into categories for easy browsing, and contain peer-written resources on contracts, law cases, and how-to guides. Microsoft has also uploaded templates onto Scribd for easy download and application to their office suite.
Free and open to all, users can decide whether documents can be public or private. Documents can also be shared via Facebook, and monitored for in-depth statistics. Scribd is also able to work well with cutting-edge website formats for greater readability on a website. “Scribd is able to convert documents into HTML5 so they can be read easily on the web,” says CEO and co-founder Trip Adler.
Now, Scribd is able to come to the mobile devices with their new service, “Float.” Float is a digital reading service that takes Scribd’s entire existing publication database and converts them to a stripped-down text format to be uploaded onto a mobile device, beginning with iPhone and branching out to the iPad and Android phones later this year. Float also opens up the opportunity for monetization of documents, as businesses both have the option to provide ads to certain publications and gain ad revenue for their own publications.
Slideshare
Once known as the “Youtube for Powerpoints,” Slideshare is not only able to upload presentations and other documents into an easily embeddable and navigable form, but can also accept most video formats. Filled with a rich selection of documents and presentations, the service keeps many small business documents available for reference. “12.5 percent of people who use our site are small business owners,” says Ross Mayfield, SlideShare’s vice president of business development, “That’s more business owners coming to us than to LinkedIn.”
With SlidesharePRO, starting at $19 per month, there is an included teleconferencing and communication service called “Zipcast” that also has seamless integration with Facebook and Twitter. Pro users are also able to gather information from the kinds of people who are reading their documents or presentations, allowing for targeted marketing research with extensive user feedback. “There are a lot of ways that you can manage and work with documents on the web,” Mayfield said, “If you want to use that content to engage others, we have a four-year track-record of being the best solution for that.”
Companies like HubSpot and Dell have used SlidesharePRO to announce mergers, train leaders, and engage their user base.
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Services for Web Forms
Wufoo
The force currently powering forms at Twitter and Y Combinator, Wufoo offers in-browser DIY form-building with customizable colors and logo options. The Wufoo interface allows building of all different kinds of forms, and users can also browse through dozens of different pre-made templates. Everything is easily navigable and very straightforward. “It’s basically a web-based version of Microsoft Access, but it looks like it was designed by Fisher Price,” says Wufoo co-founder Kevin Hale. For the more programming-inclined, Wufoo also accomidates for full CSS and HTML markups for complete integration with brand schemes.
