Musings of a Marketing Maven

Last winter I tried an early version of Acrobat Connect, and panned it. It was unreliable, so using it with clients was too risky.

Since then Adobe has overhauled the service, and it’s become quite useful when meeting with small groups for online demonstrations or collaboration. I particularly like the fact that no IT staff or technical wizards are required for this quality of web conferencing.

Highlights

Adobe has done a nice job with the user interface, especially things that influence people’s experience — as either meeting host or participant:

• the quality of what people see on-screen (visual fidelity) — see examples below
• the overall performance across the network (bandwidth management)
• the simplicity of what’s required to set up and run a meeting

While others may not care about Adobe’s attention to details like on-screen rendering, it matters to me. I find it distracting to look at webinars when every letter or character displayed on screen has fuzzy or ragged outlines.

When online meetings have to substitute for the richness of in-person interactions, subtle things like font or object rendering can make a difference in people’s quality perceptions. (See below for actual image comparisons.)

I haven’t tried the audio conferencing service that complements this offering. (My clients generally have their own conference bridges, which we use instead of Adobe’s.)

And yes, there’s a more fully featured “enterprise version” of this hosted service for businesses with much larger or more sophisticated web conferencing needs. The pricing model doesn’t work for a firm of my size, so I haven’t really tried Acrobat Connect Pro, the more sophisticated version.

Pricing

The subscription pricing for the basic level of service is quite fair: $39.95/month or $395 for an annual subscription.

The basic web conferencing service offers unlimited online meetings with up to 15 participants. There’s a pay-per-use option for those occasions when larger meetings are required.

A Simple Comparison

Here’s a quick test I did today. The first screenshot below shows a slide from a presentation I created with Apple’s Keynote, with the program operating in playback mode. (This is the best quality impression possible.) This image has been scaled down from the actual screenshot.

Caption: Screenshot of slide presented using Apple Keynote

The second image (below, also scaled down) shows what this presentation looks like when delivered as a web conference via Acrobat Connect (minus the service’s UI).

Caption: Screenshot of slide presented via Acrobat Connect web conferencing service, as viewed on a meeting attendee’s screen (minus the Acrobat Connect UI)

The host who delivered this test webinar used a different laptop, so that the on-screen viewing comparison took place on the same computer and monitor.

Clearly the image displayed via the web conference is physically smaller, given the need for screen real estate dedicated to Acrobat Connect’s user interface (chat panels, attendee lists, etc.). However, Adobe does offer some options for zooming and scaling so meeting participants can scale up the webinar’s contents to the size they prefer.

Well-designed slides or other imagery will look great when delivered via Acrobat Connect.

All in all, it’s now a pretty cool service.

And did I mention it supports both Mac and Windows users, both for meeting host and participant roles?