IR Website Best Practices Webinar Wrap-Up
We had a great turnout at our first ever webinar yesterday – IR Website Best Practices. Catherine Crofton, VP at Q4 discussed five common barriers to effective web site communications to an audience of representatives from Canada, the U.S. and the UK. (Our CEO, Darrell Heaps also Tweeted the event with lots of links to examples).
We attribute the large turnout to the fact that the web and the IR website is now the dominant channel for investor communications and many companies are looking for ways to do things better. We were really pleased with the number of people that attended and that we had lots of questions at the end. We’ll be doing webinars on a regular basis so be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed or email alerts to stay up to date.
For those of you who missed it here are some highlights of the common barriers:
1. Information is not geared to a wide range of users – Three main audiences should be considered: potential investors, new investors, and long-term investors. Some best practice examples to address these audiences include multiple points of entry to the investor section and content linked directly from the home page as well as including latest news, stock quotes, and what’s new.
2. Key information is not easily accessible – Some best practice solutions for this barrier include a navigational structure that provides entry points to key information such as “About Us”, “Investor”, “Customers”, “Media” etc. ; a home/investor index page that provides quick entry points that drill down into key content; and using quick links to bring information forward with one click. One example provided had a company using “tag clouds” which is a very useful tool to search information. It is housed on their homepage and automatically updates with prioritization of most frequently accessed content for the next visit.
3. Content does not convey or summarize a compelling investment proposition – We consider this to be the most common missed opportunity for issuers to communicate why a person should invest. There are several ways this can be resolved….through a robust homepage that integrates investor content such as providing pull downs for immediate access to key content; “What’s New” – which features anything recently added to the site such as quarterly earnings results and conference call archive, upcoming events such as annual meeting; and an IR index page that has a section entitled “Why Invest”. One company quite plainly had “Why Invest” as its first link in its left hand navigation on the homepage which had a dropdown menu that linked to “Understanding Our Business” (which included strategy), “Key Performance Drivers” and “History of Our Growth”.
4. Key content is in missing, in wrong format, or just not engaging – This is very common and we often see websites that display too much information in pdf format, long monotonous scrolls in which you have strands and strands of pages to navigate through to get to the information you are looking for, and little or no use of images or multi-media. Some best practices for this barrier included using the centre area of a page to display some “Fast Facts” and supplementing this information with “Quick Links” situated off to the right as a way of highlighting the information. Other tips included providing some imagery to supplement the text which makes it more engaging for the investor and a video of your CEO speaking about the company.
5. Lack of methods/tools to aid relationship/brand building – In our experience we have found that companies just don’t make themselves accessible. This is evident through company’s who use a generic email address such as info@investors. We have also found that simple tools to keep investors informed such as RSS feeds and email alerts are underused. There are some great ways to aid in relationship/brand building. For example, one company has made their IRO accessible by providing their full contact information and even put a face to the person by posting their picture. Another had a “design your own information” page which was very simple to set up and allows an investor to choose the items they want. Another emerging feature is the “Investor Briefcase” in which one company offered it as a “wish list” whereby one could choose items as you move through the site and then view and retrieve them in a summary area.
The five common barriers we have discussed are by no means an exhaustive list. They are ones that we continue to see on a recurring basis which can be easily managed by implementing some of the best practice solutions we outlined above.
If you’re interested in recieving a copy of the webinar (and also hearing the Q&A session) please fill out the demo request on our site and ask for the webinar slides in the comment field and I’ll send you a copy.
Related posts:
- IR Website Best Practices Webinar Wrap-Up
- Q4 IR Website Best Practices Presentation and Video now available on Website
- Webinar Replay – IR Website Best Practices
- IR Website Best Practices Webinar – Register Now!
- IR Website Best Practices – FREE Webinar
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Great list, Darrell. Of the 5 points you mentioned, I really believe this one was the most important:
“an IR index page that has a section entitled “Why Invest”. One company quite plainly had “Why Invest” as its first link in its left hand navigation on the homepage which had a dropdown menu that linked to “Understanding Our Business” (which included strategy), “Key Performance Drivers” and “History of Our Growth”.”
Information is paramount but companies need to sum it all up for investors and give them “the pitch”. “Here is why you should invest in our company” is invaluable and should be incorporated into every investor relations section.
Otherwise, you have to hope an investor has the time to go through all of your information and the ability to put it all together. This isn’t very likely, especially for new potential investors.
Regards,
George
Thanks George – it’s Sheryl Joyce from BMI…I recently started at Q4 and actually wrote the wrap up (for some reason my name isn’t showing beside this particular blog).
At any rate, I couldn’t agree with you more….this is one of the best ways to package all the relevant information to make it easier to guide a potential investor through all the reasons why they should become a shareholder. In my experience, if I have to search for the information on a website, I quickly lose interest and usually never look back.
Great list here… I have worked IR with companies for 11 years now. The most significant problem the small and microcap companies have is their inability to see things from the investor’s side. No information or long text based information does little to create any enthusiasm. People think in pictures and I think video and slide presentations go a long way to bridging the gap.
Another big item I am always working on is: engaging the investment community and building a dialog with people as people. This is to say that companies must engage with people as people and not as companies.