Often times when people arrive at Showcase's door, they arrive with the intention of setting themselves up with one showcase - a one stop shop for all of their content and information.

It's a logical decision - you can't lose anything if everything is stored in one place of truth, right?

However depending on your situation, there are actually many reasons why splitting your showcase and content up into multiple individual showcases can be beneficial -not only for your end users but also, for an effective way to keep on top of your content.  

Here are a few situations where having multiple showcases could work in your favor.

Your showcase is too huge.

It's a great problem to have, when you think about it. But having too much content in one spot can be a real problem for end users.

The larger your showcase grows, the more space it takes up on your users devices. It also takes a longer amount of time to download and update to that device (just based on pure GB size alone) - this can be difficult if your users are remote or travelling and are using data plans, as downloading huge showcases can take up a lot of data.

Having a super large showcase can also potentially create issues with actually using the showcase. When you create your showcase structure, you will likely have a main menu linking to sub menus for different areas of content. Adding in additional submenus for more and more content and information can become difficult for your users to navigate if they have to tap 15 times to get to the right PDF.

Side note: Becoming conscious of what content you actually have in your showcase is a really great way to counteract these issues - if you're adding another submenu because you're adding in a new promo video for June, do you still need the other promo videos for April and May? Probably not. So taking the time to remove old content, and replace it with new info can keep your showcase size down.

If your showcase is mega levels huge, think of large areas that could make sense as an individual showcase.

For example, if you have a large number of high-res videos and you're likely to want to keep those, or add more - why not create a 'Videos' showcase? That way your users know that if you need any video at all, they can pop into the Videos showcase and find it quickly.

You can also prompt your users to make good use of the Search and Favorites feature on their devices - allowing them to quickly find the things they need.

You're involved in multi-language or multi-market work.

We have a lot of customers who sell or market in different countries and regions.

Instead of incorporating multi language documents and videos into one presentation, an awesome way of refining your showcases and catering equally to everyone is to have different showcases for particular countries and languages.

The content itself can either be the same as your main showcase but just in another language, or it can be specifically tailored to that market.

For example,  ARCO not only has multiple showcases for their American franchisees, but has also taken the time to build identical showcases for their ARCO Mexican franchisees too - completely translated to Spanish. By using our Groups function, they are easily able to sort their users into the right groups so they only see the correct language content.

Splitting up your content by market is really beneficial also, particularly if you have many salespeople in charge of different markets, or you're dealing with differing product ranges, taxes, and prices.

You may need many showcases if your content spans different states or areas but the best part about it that you have complete control over who can see what - your users can only see what's relevant to them, so no matter  how many showcases you have your users won't need to be sifting through them to find what they need.

You need tailored content for specific clients.

In our recent case study, we looked into Amrop Netherlands and their use of showcase. A key point of their use is that they create new showcases for each individual client they deal with.

This allows them to completely hand over the showcase to the client, and they can go through anywhere in the presentation and find only relevant tailored information. Really impressive from a customer standpoint, don't you think?

Creating a "base" showcase that you copy (using our Copy function) and then create your client specific showcases off, is the perfect way to do this. You're able to build the showcase presentation structure you want, and have the information that doesn't change per client remain in the showcase - and then swap out the client specific areas and information.

You can then use Showcases Sharing or Email Pitch functions to email your client a link to their perfectly tailored complete showcase that they can view in their own time.

Things to note.

If you create multiple showcases, there are a few things to remember to make sure you're making the most out of it!

  • Multiple showcases mean multiple places you need to update and republish if your content changes.
  • You're able to add users to multiple groups - this way you can really make sue everyone sees all the content they need and no more or less!
  • If you have old showcases you don't need anymore, you can delete them from your workshop and the files will still remain within your File Library if you ever want to rebuild them! Just bare in mind that you will need to rebuild from scratch, it does not save the showcase as a whole.

If you have any questions about splitting up your showcases, get in touch with us any time at helpdesk@showcaseworkshop.com and let's have a chat!