Since the Web Accessibility Directive (WAD) came into full effect in 2021, we have been working to make iPaper and the digital catalog experience as accessible as possible. As such, we’ve recently introduced a range of improvements to our Flipbook product to enhance accessibility for your digital catalog visitors:

Tab navigation focus

Visitors can now navigate more easily through interactive elements in the Flipbook interface using the tab key. Tab focus is especially beneficial for users with motor or visual impairments, offering a more streamlined and manageable browsing experience. Each tabbed item is highlighted, providing a “focus” indicator, and can be activated or manipulated via the keyboard.

This feature also helps screen readers maintain a clear reading sequence, making navigation smoother.

Improved screen reader functionality

We’ve made several updates to support screen readers and text-to-speech (TTS) software, offering clearer, more descriptive interactions and improved navigation:

• Text content on Flipbook pages is now surfaced as readable text, enabling screen readers to present main content directly.
• Screen readers can now announce button functions, providing users with an understanding of each interactive element and enhancing control.
• Enrichment types and product names are read aloud, offering guidance on available media galleries, product details, and cart options, making content easier to explore.

These updates are already live on all iPaper Flipbooks, meaning your digital catalog visitors are already benefiting from an improved, accessible experience. 😀

Why have we revamped Statistics?

Based on our own findings, and the feedback from our customers, we’ve identified enhanced ways to measure Flipbook statistics, providing more precise and useful insights for our users.

As digital business performance becomes more data-driven, the new Statistics aims to deliver clearer insights and the accuracy needed to measure Flipbook performance effectively.

This revamp also sets the foundation for future enhancements, ensuring our statistics evolve with your needs.

What’s new compared to the old Statistics?

The new Flipbook Statistics make use of improved data modelling to provide you with greater accuracy. Previously, due to the level of data modeling involved, Page views and Time spent on page statistics were presented with inflated values. The new Statistics offer a more detailed and precise approach, which may result in seeing lower Time Spent metrics, but with a more accurate representation of performance.

How we present Flipbook Statistics for users with Consent Management Solutions has also been improved, with greater transparency around how much data is actually collected from consent-giving users, versus how much is extrapolated.

We’ve also addressed the challenge of logged page views without corresponding sessions, which would occur when a visitor viewed a page so briefly that a session would not be recorded. The new Flipbook Statistics ensure that page views are logged only when a session exists, ensuring consistency.

Introducing the iPaper Score

To complement our new Statistics, we are also introducing an iPaper Score for every Flipbook. The iPaper Score is a novel way to show you how effective your digital catalogs are at each stage of the visitor journey.

Based on the Store Metaphor — a framework that we have built using over 19 years’ of industry knowledge — the iPaper Score provides statistical insights and key performance indicators (KPIs) for your Flipbook, based on the 4 stages of the Store Metaphor:

• The Attraction metric tracks how many people visit your Flipbook within a specific time frame. The more visitors you attract to your Flipbook, the higher the chance of purchases.
• The Inspiration KPI shows how many visitors engage with your Flipbook. Engagement is measured through interactions like clicks on videos, products, or searches.​
• The Intention metric captures how many of your visitors show buying intent, such as adding items to their cart or checking store locators.
• The Conversion KPI measures how many visitors convert to paying customers through our supported checkout options.

New Statistics offer cleaner visuals

The visual presentation of your Flipbook Statistics has also been revised to be more intuitive and accessible:

Fewer, more intuitive tabs

Reorganizing the way we present your Flipbook data has meant that we’re able to trim the number of tabs down for you to navigate:

The Overview tab, formerly Key Statistics, presents you with all the data points you need to understand your Flipbook’s performance at a glance.

We’ve introduced the iPaper Score within Statistics, highlighting how well your Flipbook aligns with the Store Metaphor.

The Heatmap has been enhanced to display data split between the two pages of a spread, allowing you to see how visitors interact with each page individually. We’ve also made it clear how much of the data is extrapolated when using Consent Management Solutions, helping you better gauge the accuracy of your statistics.

More to come in 2025

We've renamed the Shop and Modules tabs to Commerce and Miscellaneous as part of our ongoing Statistics updates. These small changes set the stage for further changes in how Flipbook data will be presented in 2025.

Starting today, the Commerce tab displays all Shop and checkout stats, including key metrics like average checkout value and items per checkout. The Miscellaneous tab gathers data on active modules and integrations in your Flipbook.

Try the new Statistics today

From today, the new Statistics are available to all iPaper customers alongside Legacy Statistics. You can enable new Statistics, and switch between them and Legacy Statistics from the Statistics view on the Flipbook level.

Up until early January 2025, you will be able to freely switch between the new, and Legacy Statistics, allowing you to acquaint yourself with the changes to come. During this period, you can switch to the new Statistics for each Flipbook individually, choosing how many to update. In January 2025, all iPaper customers will transition to the new Statistics.

When we switch fully over to New Statistics in 2025, your historical Flipbook data dating back to October 1, 2024, will remain accessible in Statistics.

Earlier this year, we introduced Multi-account Login, allowing users to access multiple iPaper accounts with a single set of credentials. Now, Organizations takes this further by providing a streamlined way to manage user access across all iPaper accounts within your organization.

User Management

Organizations gives the organization administrator an overview of all iPaper accounts linked to your organization, the users associated with these accounts and the ability to grant, revoke, and manage access to them, as required. It also grants the organization administrator access to all the iPaper accounts in the organization.

Organizations allows you to quickly set up new colleagues on any of the iPaper accounts in your business, that they need access to, as well as set, or change the level of account access for individual users across your organization.

Similarly, you can now revoke access for any users who no longer require it, or have left your organization, meaning that access to your accounts remains secure.

Sessions Overview

Organizations give you a 30-day overview of session counts for all Flipbooks within an account. This helps you understand the traffic each account attracts.

How to get Organizations?

Organizations requires that at least one account in your business is on an Enterprise+ plan. You can then add as many accounts, on any plan, as your organization needs.

If you’d like to get your business set up with Organizations, reach out to our Support team using the messenger in the corner! ✌️

We’ve made our Split-testing tool even more robust with the ability to now set different weights for the Flipbooks you are testing, based on browsing device!

Given the difference both in screen size, and browsing habits across desktop and mobile devices, you might want to test the performance of Flipbooks based on viewing device.

With the added functionality of specifying weights based on device, you can effectively create different versions of your Flipbook: one optimized for desktop and one optimized for mobile, and send traffic to the corresponding catalog, meaning your visitors get the best possible browsing experience for the device they are using.

Previously, our Split-Testing tool allowed you to test two separate Flipbook URLs against each other, but made no distinction between for browsing device. This meant that if you weighted your Flipbooks at 50% each, there would be a 50% chance that a visitor would see either Flipbook, regardless of what device they were visiting from.

Now when you set up a split test, you’ll be presented with the option to set separate weights for your Flipbooks, for desktop and mobile devices respectively:

If you’re not already split-testing your Flipbooks, why not give our Split-testing tool a go, today:

If you manage more than one iPaper account, you’ll love our latest update: with Multi-account Login.

Previously, every iPaper user needed a unique email address to log in, which in the case of users who manage multiple accounts, meant having as many email addresses. Users could work around this by using plus addressing, but this still required using multiple login credentials (hopefully, via a password manager).

This is now a thing of the past! As part of our mission to streamline the user experience, with Multi-account Login, you’ll only need to remember one set of login details, to access, and switch between all the iPaper accounts you manage.

How it works

With Multi-account Login, you will be presented with a list of all the iPaper accounts associated with your credentials, allowing you to choose the account you want to work in.

Switching between accounts has also become easy. Users will be able to navigate across all their accounts by selecting Account Switcher, which will open the list of accounts for the user.

Multi-account Login accommodates two-factor authentication, and single sign-on solutions

If your iPaper accounts use two-factor authentication (2FA) or single sign-on (SSO) solutions for added security, Multi-account login accommodates for both.

Available for everyone

Multi-account Login is available for all iPaper users across all plans. Users using the same login credentials across multiple accounts will automatically be presented with the account selector when logging in, if their credentials are registered on more than one account.

Account permissions are respected across all accounts, meaning you can be an administrator on one account, and a user on another, all using the same login.

Already manage multiple accounts with different login credentials?

If you already manage multiple iPaper accounts, and would like to convert your different logins to a single, multi-account login, you’ll need to do so manually.

Simply create a new user across all the accounts you manage, using the same email, and you’ll automatically be presented with all the accounts associated with your credentials, when you log in.

We’re parting ways with our current UI font, Inter, which, while reliable and a good all-rounder in terms of readability, we’ve felt is inauthentic to the user experience we aim to deliver. In order to find a suitable successor, we’ve decided to look to our roots.

Print is an industry that has driven innovation since its dawn: before the digital Flipbook, there was print on paper. Before paper, there was papyrus. With such a clear red thread from the medium of choice of Antiquity, to our modern, digital offering today, choosing Papyrus as our new UI font seemed an obvious choice.

Why Papyrus?

An unusual typeface, Papyrus effectively merges the elegance of a traditional roman letterform with the hand-crafted look of highly skilled calligraphy, embodying the high level of craft in a well executed Flipbook.

While we agree that the new font takes some getting used to initially, we’re confident that our customers will love engaging with the iPaper interface even more, with this font. Plus, it makes everything feel a bit like Avatar, which is probably not a bad thing.

If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably realized that we’re not serious. While we’d probably recommend using a font with better readability in your Flipbook, you can use any, including Papyrus, to make sure you deliver a browsing experience that embodies your brand.

When your links are presented as clear calls to action, your visitors know, instinctively, where to click. However, often product images, or other elements and areas of your catalog are covered by link styles to make them clickable too, and these might not be instantly obvious to shoppers. The result is fewer links clicked.

To draw greater attention to link style calls to action that aren’t instinctive, and obvious, we’ve introduced an additional highlight effect to link style enrichments with a hover effect. This subtle effect allows you to draw attention to your CTAs by momentarily highlighting all links on a page upon loading.

How it works on existing enrichments

The new highlight effect will be automatically applied to all link style enrichments that have already hover effect applied. This means that if you’ve toggled a hover effect for enrichments in your Flipbooks, they will now show the highlight effect, too, when loaded. You are, however, always able to toggle off the additional highlight effect by unchecking the Highlight style box.

Existing enrichments without a hover effect will remain unaffected.

How it works on new enrichments

When you create new Enrichments with a hover effect, the highlight effect will automatically be applied to them. You are, however, always able to toggle off the additional highlight effect by unchecking the Highlight style box.

Improved functionality on mobile devices

With the new effect, we have also improved the functionality of hover effects, and specifically, how they load, on mobile devices.

Previously, animations loaded per spread, meaning that on mobile devices, where only one page is shown at a time, the Hover effect was only visible on the first of two pages. With this latest update, hover effects on links and enrichments load per page, meaning that your visitors get to experience them fully, on each page that they load.

You can read more about how to set hover, and highlight effects on your link styles, in our guide:

Late last year, we showed you how you can use Custom Scripting to add some seasonal flair to your Flipbooks, to create a more engaging browsing experience. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, and with many digital retailers preparing themed catalogs, we’d like to share another seasonal effect. We think you’ll love it:

You can find out how to implement the love-hearts effect in your Flipbooks using Custom Scripting in our guide, below:

Custom Scripting is available on all accounts, and with it, you can inject third-party scripts into your Flipbook: from custom tracking, to pop-ups and any custom effect or script you wish. Your imagination is the limit!

Giving your shoppers the ability to complete their purchases via their preferred messaging service is vital in delivering a superior catalog experience.

In our latest update, we’ve brought our Viber checkout option to parity with our WhatsApp checkout option, by allowing visitors to send their cart contents to a predefined number, like a local sales representative, or your business number.

Now, shoppers using your Viber checkout option will be able to:

• Check out to a predefined number of your choosing, or
• Check out to a number from their Viber contacts list.

How to set it up

To allow your shoppers to send their cart contents to a predefined number, all you need to do is enter the country code and recipient number in the checkout setup settings.

Now, when your customers check out using Viber, they won’t have to specify which number to send their cart contents!

To allow your customers the freedom to send their cart contents to a number from their Viber contact list, you simply leave the country code and recipient number fields blank in the setup.

Ready to offer your shoppers a Viber checkout, or update your existing setup? Read our Viber checkout guide, below:

We’ve got great news: we will begin gradually rolling out the redesigned checkout experience to all Shop-enabled accounts starting January 8, 2024.

With the positive feedback, we’ve received from customers already using the new checkout experience through Early Access, we’re confident it offers a much more inspiring, and informative view of your customers’ cart.

What can I expect?

The redesigned experience moves the cart from a peripheral sidebar, to a front-and-center modal that is space-efficient, allowing for seamless integration of product images balanced with headlines, descriptions, and quantity selectors. This allows your shoppers to easily review their cart contents.

The new cart experience has been designed to visually stand out, emphasizing the significance of the shopping cart in the user's journey.

This design choice eliminates the previous risk of the sidebar and catalog competing for user attention. The result is a more visually appealing and user-friendly interface:

The redesigned checkout is part of a larger overhaul of the Shop experience, and complements the new toast notifications customers see when they add a product to their cart. These notifications include the convenient option to quickly add multiple units of products to the cart.

When can I expect it?

We will begin a gradual rollout of the new checkout on January 8, 2024.

Until then, why not experience the redesigned cart yourself, in our live demo Flipbook: