The Best Investor Relations Websites and What Makes Them Great

How We Know What We Know

For context: the company I work for, Investis Digital, manages and host more than 2,000 corporate and IR websites. Those websites give us data every day on how clients reach key audiences such as investors. 

We also benchmark corporate communications online, including websites, using our proprietary Connect.IQ methodology. Connect.IQ features 300 criteria grouped into five categories. In 2021, we benchmarked more than 1,000 corporate websites from the US, UK, Europe and the rest of the world. From there, we put together our Connect.IQ Global 100 – a group of companies across Europe, UK, and US that we think communicate most effectively online through their corporate websites and associated digital channels. Connect.IQ gave me the data I needed to share the following: 

The Companies That Do the Best Job with IR

Our Top 30 is dominated by UK and European companies, but we’re seeing more US companies make the Top 30 and Top 100. Traditionally we have seen companies in sectors such as Oil and Gas and Industrials appear in the Top 10. This is true in our latest list: Royal Dutch Shell top the leaderboard, and the Top 10 includes competitors such as ENI and BP. 

Now, who are the best in class with investor relations outreach?  Here are the top performers, cross-indexed against the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250: 

Congratulations to the leaders. They set the gold standard in IR communications. 

IR Section: Most Viewed Pages

We also took a hard look at what investors are actually looking at within the IR section of businesses’ websites. These are based on the 2,000 corporate and IR sites that we actively managed, and we compare 2021 versus 2020: 

Perhaps it’s no surprise that the Top 10 is dominated by results, reports, presentations, share price, and the annual report. I would call out a few particularly interesting findings: 

• The annual report summary is the sixth most viewed section of your IR site. The annual report summary consists of one or two pages within your IR section that summarize your annual report and links to a PDF of the full report. We examine the best approaches in our full presentation. 
• Two pages just outside the Top 10 are notable: the investment case and a section for debt investors/fixed income investors.  Both have become more important since the pandemic, and we provide ideas for how to do these well in our full presentation. 

Devices Your Audience Uses and How They Get to Your Site

It’s also important to know how audiences are finding IR content, including devices they use. First, devices: 

You may have talked with designers who have impressed upon you the need for a mobile-first experience. Well, in reality, for IR audiences, the computer remains the dominant device to access content on the corporate website and the IR site specifically. In fact, around 65 percent of all visits on the IR section were made on a computer. Of course, that means 35 percent of your audience are using a mobile device – generally their phone. This means that if you are using PDFs to deliver key content, you are delivering a poor experience to 35 percent of your audience. We suggest companies rely as little as possible on PDFs for providing crucial content. Where PDFs are necessary, such as your Annual Report, consider using a screen- first landscape format rather than the traditional portrait orientation.

Now, how does your audience arrive at IR content on their devices? How do people get to content within the IR section? Are they coming through the home page and navigating to the IR section? Are they coming through the investor landing page and doing a deep dive into the IR section? The answer to both is a resounding “no”: 

In fact, the majority of visits to the IR section come from direct links (such as email) or search. The second most common method comes from people navigating from page to page on a site. The least likely way someone will get into your IR content is via the home page of your corporate site. 

What does all this mean? Well, it means you need to make sure you have good navigation and sign posting across the IR section and on the broader site. In addition, if you are only highlighting key content on your home page – promoting, say, information about your sustainability performance on your home page – consider promoting that same content on your investor landing page and at the bottom of key pages within your IR section in order to direct investor’s attention to key content you wish to promote. If it’s just on your home page, they will likely miss it. 

Contact Investis Digital

To learn how we can help you audit your corporate/IR site or to receive the full presentation we gave, contact us. We’ll apply our proprietary Connect.IQ methodology to help you see how you measure up.