Our focus has been in making your flipbooks stickier and more engaging in an effort to get customers to take action. Today, we're releasing two new features to do just that: Installable Collections and Downloadable Contact Cards.

Installable Collections

Similar to our update last month that makes it possible for a customer to install your flipbook on their device for offline viewing, we are now releasing the same capability for your collections. Now a customer can install your collection on their device (computer, tablet, and phone) and have access to any of the simplebooklets you've included in your collection. Think of it like a folder where your curated simplebooklets are easily accessible all in one location for your customer.

When you update your collection your customer will see the changes immediately. It becomes a repository on your customers device that you get to manage the content remotely.

Installable collections have a lot of benefits:

Newsletters

Your readers can install a collection of your newsletters on their device. Whenever you create a new newsletter, just add it to the collection and your reader will automatically see it. Plus they will have quick access to your entire archive of old newsletters. All from a single click, no URLs to remember.

Travel

Create collections around a destination or a travelers trip. The traveler installs the collection on their mobile device or tablet and they will have the relevant brochures and flyers for your destination right at their fingertips, even if they don't have a connection. It's the easiest way to create a travel kit for a tourist.

Sales

Build portfolios of products and services to share with a customer. The customer only need tap on your logo on their device to launch the set of brochures and products guides you've assembled for them to reference.

Its a one tap experience for your customers to access multiple booklets all at once through a branded native-app like experience.

Downloadable Contact Cards

We've had a contact menu in your simplebooklet navigation tools for quite awhile. It's been a very successful way to engage with customers and get them to reach out to your business. But we wanted to really leverage this tool to create a lasting connection. We wanted them to be more like a business card itself.

To make this happen, we've enhanced the contact card to do the following:

1. You can now add your Name, Business Title and Company to the Business Card.

2. The contact card has been reformatted to look more like a Business Card.

3. At the bottom of the contact card, there is now a downloadable VCF file. When the customer taps on that, they can import all your contact data into the apps they use (sgoogle contacts, apple contacts, etc..). That way you are permanently in their contacts list and can be used by other applications like phone, email, and texting.

Default Settings

The default settings on the dashboard will let you fill out the contact card information in one place then have it applied to all the simplebooklets and collections in your account. It helps speed up the process of creating multiple simplebooklets without having to repeat add information in each one.

You can now set a custom transition specifically for mobile devices. This way you can choose the page flip transition that best suits the display of your simplebooklet on a mobile device (instead of the default two styles of transition you used to have to use).

To set your mobile page transition, you simply do the following:

1. Open your simplebooklet in the DESIGN tab.
2. Select the TRANSITION menu.
3. Select the tab with the mobile icon.
4. Using the pulldowns, select the page transition you want to occur on mobile devices.
5. Tap the DONE button.

Your simplebooklet will now use the mobile page transition you selected whenever it is opened in a mobile phone. Tablets and desktops will continue to use the page transition you selected or left as default.

This is a major update for the way you use Simplebooklet.

With this update, your customers can now download and install your simplebooklet flipbook as a stand alone native like app on any device. From their mobile, tablet or desktop device, your customer will simply tap the install button, and your flipbooklet will be installed as a stand alone app on their device.

Your customer will see a branded launch icon on their mobile homescreen or computer desktop. When tapped, it will open your flipbooklet in a dedicated viewer. This viewer will present your Simplebooklet flipbooklet exactly the same way it looks in your browser.

The Benefits Of Installing A Simplebooklet

There are a lot of benefits to having an installable Simplebooklet flipbooklet, for both your customer and your organization. They include:

1. Offine Viewing The ability to view your flipbooklet offline means now your customer can open and read your flipbooklet even if they don't have an Internet connection.

2. Same Great Presentation Instead of the usual PDF viewer with a flat vertical presentation, your customer gets the professional presentation you created using our DESIGN tools to make sure that your flipbooklet still looks impressive on any device.

3. Faster Loading It removes a lot of the friction of using an URL. Now, a customer simply taps the branded launch icon on their homescreen and they are reading your flipbooklet. No more opening a browser, trying to remember your booklet URL, and typing it in on a little keyboard. One tap and they are reading your flipbooklet. Plus a lot of the code is stored locally so less stuff to wait for to download.

4. Native Experience You impress customers by having a flipbooklet that they can actually install on their device and experience your content, looking like you've spent thousands of dollars building a native app.

5. Any Device Your flipbooklet can be installed on any device, from iOS, padOS, MacOS, to Windows and Android. Your flipbooklet will act as a native app on a mobile, tablet, and desktop computer.

Making Your Simplebooklet Flipbooklet Installable

It's easy to turn any existing flipbooklet into an installable app. First, you will need a PRO level subscription or higher to access this feature.

To activate the Installation Option for your customers, do the following:

1. Open your simplebooklet in the DESIGN tab.
2. Select NAVBARS menu.
3. Toggle on the INSTALL button to appear in your navigation bar.
4. Set up the customization options for your icon brand.

Now, when a customer taps the install icon on your flipbooklet's navbar, they will have the option to install on any device they are currently using. Install it on your own device to keep your own flipbooklet accessible anytime.

Learn more in this help document: https://docs.simplebooklet.com/article/119-installing-your-flipbooklet-on-a-device

Try it yourself on this demonstration booklet we've created for you to see just how powerful this feature could be for your business.

You can now apply multiple passwords to the same simplebooklet. This is useful for a few scenarios.

1. If you want to manage access to a single booklet among multiple people.
2. If you want to sell your booklet access and provide monitored access to the booklet.
3. If you want to track how many times a specific password is used to log into your booklet (like a sales presentation or a flipbook for a specific person).

To manage passwords, open the PUBLISH tab for your Simplebooklet and use the password option in the visibility pulldown menu. Each password can be assigned a name, however the reader will only need to enter their password.

You can also manage the passwords from the dashboard in your simplebooklet listing.

We've updated the toolbar for the text editor in simplebooklet. Now when you double tap on any text on your page, the toolbar will automatically appear along the top of the page.

This should make it easier to edit text and apply styles and formatting.

We've also improved a number of database functions in the app behind the scenes to improve your simplebooklet responsiveness and load times.

We've rolled out new features for our Starter, Pro, and Business plans.

For All Plans:

Default Settings - on your dashboard you now have the option to set up default variables that get applied across all of your simplebooklets. You can set your contact information, google analytics ID, logo, and search availability status. These default variables will get applied across all your booklets and any new booklets you create. You can override any of them directly by editing the content in a simplebooklet.

3dcart - sell products on 3dcart? now you can embed those products in a simplebooklet page. Your customers will be able to select quantity, color,and more, then add them directly to your store cart on 3dcart right from your simplebooklet. Its a great way to make a landing page or microsite that focuses on one or two products from your inventory.

Website URL Linking - Expanding on the ability to add a weblink to any element or creating a link hotspot on your page, you now have 3 options for how that link is opened. You can choose to open the link in a new tab, open the link in your current tab (which would replace the booklet in the browser tab with that webpage), or you can have that link open in a lightbox. The lightbox will open as a fullscreen overlay on top of your simplebooklet. This is a great way to show a simplebooklet embedded in another simplebooklet, or a form from another webpage, while ensuring that the reader doesn't leave your booklet.

Variables in Text - You can now display the default setting variables inside text elements. Highlight some text in your textbox and use the variables button in the text tools to automatically select some of the variable settings to replace that text. It's a great way to personalize content that is used for templates or copies. It will take the contact information found in your Contact menu or default settings and automatically replace the content in that text box.

For Business Plans:

Team Accounts - We've made it much easier to set up and manage team accounts. These are accounts that you, as the admin account, can create, manage, and populate with copies of your booklets. Under the new team account menu, you can add a new team account user (the user will receive an email inviting them to access their new account). You can import multiple booklets at once into the team member's account using the import tool. Team accounts are useful for anyone managing a sales team, franchises, client accounts, and travel agents. Each team account has the same features you find in a PRO plan.

Team Account Variables - You can set the default variable settings for each team account. When you import a booklet from your admin account into the team account, it will automatically update the copied booklet with the team account default information. This is terrific for personalizing booklets to the team account user.

We've got more features rolling out shortly, so stay tuned.

We've just released a new feature. Prebuilt form code blocks.

You can drag a preformatted form onto any simplebooklet page. These forms have all the fields required to capture feedback from customers. They can be resized, styled with the element toolbar, and even edited with the text editor.

You set the email address that completed forms get sent, plus a copy of completed forms are saved in your LEADS menu found on your dashboard (which can be exported in xls format).

We have a number of different form blocks you can choose from, so just drag one onto your page and try it for yourself. It's a terrific way to engage with customers and build leads.

Its just a start, but we've added a new way to make a microsite. You can now import your posts from Instagram, select only those you want to display, and get a microsite automatically created for you. You'll be able to create compelling microsite presentation from your posts, then enhance each page with more content, videos, audio narration, buttons, and more.

We think it's a great way to create compelling content from your Instagram feed and leverage it to so many more communication channels you have.

We've got some big updates for June. They include a new dashboard experience, a new WIX plugin experience, and a few new Google Drive integrations.

New Dashboard

We've redesigned the dashboard of simplebooklet to make it easier to make a new microsite and access your existing microsites. We've also improved accessibility to your account information and the other tools you use to promote your business.

We are launching over the next month a number of new video tutorials as well to help you learn about all the features you can take advantage of on simplebooklet.

Wix Plugin

We've made some big improvements to our WIX integration, making it much easier to convert and manage simplebooklet's on your WIX page. The new Wix Plugin supports more file types to convert and improves the tool access for managing existing embedded simplebooklets.

Google Drive Integrations

You can now add a Google Sheets or Google Slides presentation as a button on your page. When your reader taps the button, it will launch a lightbox to give your reader access to that spreadsheet or slide presentation.

Videos

We've added a new feature that allows you to embed a video you have stored in your Google Drive account. By connecting your Google Drive account in the Video tool in the EDIT tab, you can add your video to your simplebooklet page. No more requirement to have the video on Youtube or Vimeo.

We'll be launching some more new features in July so stay tuned.

We've just rolled some new updates to our embed code and lead gate.

Embed Code

You can now add the zoom/shrink button to both your embedded booklets and your lightbox fullscreen booklets. This means a viewer can zoom and pan your pages scaled in and out both on your website page and when they open it in the fullscreen lightbox view.

You can also choose to open your embedded booklet either as a lightbox or as a new tab in the browser. By default it opens as a lightbox that fills the entire screen with an opaque black background. When you choose to open the fullscreen view in a new tab, it opens it with all the microsite customization for your booklet that you did in the DESIGN tab.

To configure these settings, go to the PUBLISH tab > Select EMBED ON WEBSITES > then toggle on the menu options for Magnify Buttons and Fullscreen Open Fullscreen As Tab.

Lead Gate

The lead gate that requires a viewer to enter some personal information before being able to view your content now has a new field. You can now select to collect the customers Business Name. To add the business name requirement, you can do the following:

Open your booklet in the DESIGN tab > Tap POPUPS > LEAD GATE > check the box beside Business Name.