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Australian Startup Qwilr Is Breaking The PDF Mold With Its Web Savvy Business Docs

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Smart Company

Impressions matter. They are subconscious evaluations customers make about a startup and they happen reflexively. Within the first second, prospective customers form judgments about a startup based on its appearance and familiarity. The psychology of first impressions isn’t new to businesses. Companies have long acknowledged the importance of presenting themselves purposely. But this has predominantly extended to prominent marketing areas such as branding, positioning and communication.

There has been less focus on creating subtle marketing materials that cultivate positive impressions, particularly with things like business documents.

Australian startup Qwilr is a web-based tool that allows businesses to “replace PDF proposals, quotes, and presentations with interactive and mobile friendly web pages.” Operating a SaaS model, the platform allows users to create “good-looking documents” from built-in templates and customize them with live-editing tools. These documents, rather than being downloadable attachments, are presented as web pages — a medium positioned to be more technologically intuitive.

In my conversation with co-founder and CEO, Dylan Baskind, he described how the product was inspired by the ubiquity of the internet and the underutilized power of documents on the web. "Ninety-nine percent of people and businesses have to tell their stories, make value propositions and convince people of a viewpoint. But these tools, the traditional document ecosystem, are predicated on the idea of documents as paper… the web is flexible and very, very powerful."

Baskind wants to change the behavior of how businesses view document systems holistically. "Qwilr’s big idea is to completely blur the boundary between the web and documents. Our vision is to make the language of the web accessible to literally anybody, anywhere.”

Qwilr / Qwilr.com

There is a psychological underpinning that explains this trend away from documents as physical files.

Web pages are familiar. Users are exposed to their layouts on a frequent basis and are used to their behavior. Clicking and scrolling are now subconscious. As such, when new information is presented in this format there is less intimidation. But this intuitiveness is also augmented by an emphasis on simplicity. Under the current document system, there are a number of intermediary steps for users to access content. Files need to be downloaded, located and opened with programs (ie. Word, Powerpoint, PDF readers) before the recipient can view the information.

This friction represents complexity, which is daunting to our ability to process information.

Our brains are psychologically wired to preference cognitive fluency — the ease with which we can interpret information. When information is harder to process it encourages slower reasoning because it requires additional effort. Such disfluency, in the context of receiving documents, may harm the effectiveness and understanding of the information being presented.

Qwilr is positioning itself as the alternative to the cumbersome status quo.

The product eliminates the complexity of coding a website while maintaining attractive design, which it hopes will simplify the process of creating professional documents. According to Baskind, the strength of simplification is what resonates with his users. "The most common feedback [from users] is that it's incredibly easy with Qwilr to create things that are impressive and make an impact, whether it's a quote and proposal for new business, or a board report, or just a thought they want to share.”

By making the presentation of documents easier, Qwilr allows companies to focus more intently on delivering value to their respective customers. Baskind says that this has positively impacted the profitability of businesses that use Qwilr. "We recently did some research and calculated that our users have closed a quarter of a billion dollars of accepted quotes through the platform.”

Tellingly, this value is set to compound as the startup continues to accelerate its growth. The greater the reach of the platform, the higher the number of "Qwilrs" that will be shared with the community. Baskind offered this inherent sharing behavior as an explanation for the startup’s virality. “One of the great things about our business is that the more users who create qwilrs and send them out into the world, the more opportunities there are for people to discover Qwilr. It's a viral feedback loop in that way.”

But in addition to organic growth, the Sydney-based startup recently raised $1.5 million in addition funding and is focused on expanding its team. "We're looking for more of that talent now who can join us on the next stage of Qwilr's growth,” said Baskind on hiring. The startup currently reaches 80 countries in 26 languages but is intent on growing that further.

Businesses will continue to use documents. This appears to be a constant. But Qwilr offers an alternative to how these documents can be presented and disseminated. The startup aims to introduce a document system that focuses on the customer’s experience and prioritizes psychological simplicity. This cognitive fluency will benefit how businesses send information because it underpins positive evaluations.

Remember, impressions matter.

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